LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 


BY  UPTON  SINCLAIR 

LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

THE  FASTING  CURE 

KING    MIDAS 

PRINCE   HAGEN 

THE  JOURNAL  OF  ARTHUR  STIRLING 

MANASSAS 

THE   OVERMAN 

THE  JUNGLE 

THE   INDUSTRIAL   REPUBLIC 

THE   METROPOLIS 

THE    MONEYCHANGERS 

SAMUEL   THE   SEEKER 


at  all  bookshops 


LOVE'S 
PILGRIMAGE 


A  NOVEL 


Upton  Sinclair 


MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


Copyright  ign  by  Mitchell  Kennerley 


To  those  who  throughout  the  world 
are  fighting  for  the  emancipation  of 
woman  I  dedicate  this  woman's  book. 


P53537 


AM/  A/ 


532:126 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 


Loves  Entanglement 


BOOK  I 

THE 

BOOK  H 

THE 

BOOK  III 

THE 

BOOK  IV 

THE 

BOOK  V 

THE 

BOOK  VI 

THE 

BOOK  VII 

THE 

BOOK  VIII 

L 

THE 

BOOK  IX 

THE 

BOOK  X 

THE 

BOOK  XI 

THE 

BOOK  XII 

THE 

BOOK  XIII 

THE 

BOOK  XIV 

THE 

BOOK  XV 

THE 

B'JOK  XVI 

THE 

THE  VICTIM  HESITATES  81 

THE  VICTIM  APPROACHES  135 

THE  BAIT  is  SEIZED  167 

THE  CORDS  ARE  TIGHTENED  199 

THE  CAPTURE  is  COMPLETED  £53 

PART  II 

Loves  Captivity 

CAPTIVE  BOUND  287 

CAPTIVE  IN  LEASH  325 

END  OF  THE  TETHER,  359 

TORTURE-HOUSE  395 

TREADMILL  44>i 

MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE  501 

PRICE  OF  RANSOM  541 

CAPTIVE  FAINTS  583 

BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  613 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 


PART    I 

Loves  Entanglement 

BOOK  I 
THE    VICTIM 


It  was  m  a  little  woodland  glen,  with  a  streamlet 
tumbling  through  it.  She  sat  with  her  back  to  a  snowy 
birch-tree,  gazing  into  the  eddies  of  a  pool  below;  and 
he  lay  beside  her,  upon  the  soft,  mossy  ground,  reading 
out  of  a  book  of  poems.  Images  of  joy  were  passing 
before  them;  and  there  came  four  lines  with  a  picture — 

"Hard  by,  a  cottage- chimney  smokes, 
From  betwixt  two  aged  oaks, 
Where  Cory  don  and  Thyrsis,  met, 
Are  at  their  savory  dinner  set" 

"Ah!"  said  she.  "I  always  loved  that.  Let  us  be 
Cory  don  and  Thyrsis!" 

He  smiled.     "They  were  both  of  them  men,"  he  said. 

"Let  us  change  it,"  she  responded — "just  between 
ourselves!" 

"Very  well — Corydon!"  said  he. 

Then,  after  a  moment's  thought,  she  added,  "But  we 
didn't  have  the  cottage" 

"No,"  said  he — "nor  even  the  dwmer!" 


§  1.     IT  was  the  Highway  of  Lost  Men. 

They  shivered,  and  drew  their  shoulders  together  as 
they  walked,  for  it  was  night,  and  a  cold,  sleety  rain  was 
falling.  The  lights  from  saloons  and  pawn-shops  fell 
upon  their  faces — faces  haggard  and  gaunt  with 
misery,  or  bloated  with  disease  and  sin.  Some  stared 
before  them  fixedly ;  some  gazed  about  with  furtive  and 
hungry  eyes  as  they  shuffled  on.  Here  and  there  a  police 
man  stood  in  the  shelter,  swinging  his  club  and  watch 
ing  them  as  they  passed.  Music  called  to  them  from 
dives  and  dance-halls,  and  lighted  signs  and  flaring- 
colored  pictures  tempted  them  in  the  entrances  of  cheap 
museums  and  theatres ;  they  lingered  before  these,  glad 
of  even  a  moment's"  shelter.  Overhead  the  elevated 
trains  pounded  by ;  and  from  the  windows  one  could  see 
men  crowded  about  the  stoves  in  the  rooms  of  lodging- 
houses,  where  the  steam  from  their  garments  made  a 
blur  in  the  air. 

Down  this  highway  walked  a  lad,  about  fifteen  years 
of  age,  pale  of  face,  and  with  delicate  and  sensitive  fea 
tures.  His  overcoat  was  buttoned  tightly  about  his 
neck,  and  his  hands  thrust  into  his  pockets ;  he  gazed 
around  him  swiftly  as  he  walked.  He  came  to  this  place 
every  now  and  then,  but  he  never  grew  used  to  what  he 
saw. 

He  eyed  the  men  who  passed  him ;  and  when  he  came 
to  a  saloon  he  would  push  open  the  door  and  gaze  about. 
Sometimes  he  would  enter,  and  hurry  through,  to  peer 
into  the  compartments  in  the  back;  and  then  go  out 
again,  giving  a  wide  berth  to  the  drinkers,  and  shrink- 

3 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 


ing  from'  their  glances.  Once  a  girl  appeared  in  a  door 
way,  and  smiled  and  nodded  to  him ;  he  started  and 
hurried  out,  shuddering.  Her  wanton  black  eyes  haunted 
him,  hinting  unimaginable  things. 

Then,  on  a  corner,  he  stopped  and  spoke  to  a  police 
man.  "Hello !"  said  the  man,  and  shook  his  head — "No, 
not  this  time."  So  the  boy  went  on ;  there  were  several 
miles  of  this  Highway,  and  each  block  of  it  the  same. 

At  last,  in  a  dingy  bar-room,  with  saw-dust  strewn 
upon  the  floor,  and  the  odor  of  stale  beer  and  tobacco- 
smoke  in  the  air — here  suddenly  the  boy  sprang  for 
ward,  with  a  cry :  "Father !"  And  a  man  who  sat  with 
bowed  head  in  a  corner  gave  a  start,  and  lifted  a  white 
face  and  stared  at  him.  He  rose  unsteadily  to  his  feet, 
and  staggered  to;fche  other,  and  fell  upon  his  shoulder, 
sobbing,  "My  son  !  My  son !" 

How  many  times  had  Thyrsis  heard  those  words — in 
how  many  hours  of  anguish !  They  sank  into  the  deeps 
of  him,  waking  echoes  like  the  clang  of  a  bell:  they 
voiced  all  the  terror  and  grief  of  defeated  life — "My 
son !  My  son !" 

The  man  clung  to  him,  weeping,  and  pouring  out  the 
flood  of  his  shame.  "I  have  fallen  again — I  am  lost — 
I  am  lost!" 

The  occupants  of  the  place  were  watching  the  scene 
with  dull  curiosity ;  and  the  boy  was  trembling  like  a 
wild  deer  trapped. 

"Yes,  father,  yes  !    Let  us  go  home." 

"Home — home,  my  son?  Will  you  take  me  home? 
Oh,  I  couldn't  bear  to  go !" 

"But  you  must  come  home." 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  still  love  me,  son?" 

"Yes,  father,  I  still  love  you.  I  want  to  try  to  help 
you.  Come  with  me." 


THE   VICTIM  5 

the  boy  would  gaze  about  and  ask,  "Where  is 
your  hat?" 

"Hat,  my  son?  I  don't  know.  I  have  lost  it."  The 
boy  would  see  his  torn  and  mud-stained  clothing,  and 
the  poor  old  pitiful  face,  with  the  eyes  blood-shot  and 
swollen,  and  the  skin,  that  had  been  rosy,  and  was  now  n 
ghastly,  ashen  gray.  He  would  choke  back  his  feelings, 
a^nd  grip  his  hands  to  keep  himself  together. 

"Come,  father,  take  my  hat,  and  let  us  go." 

"No,  my  son.  I  don't  need  any  hat.  Nothing  can 
hurt  me — I  am  lost !  Lost !" 

So  they  would  go  out,  arm  in  arm ;  and  while  they 
made  their  progress  up  the  Highway,  the  man  would 
pour  out  his  remorse,  and  tell  the  story  of  his  weeks  of 
horror. 

Then,  after  a  mile  or  so,  he  would  halt. 

"My  son !" 

"What  is  it,  father?" 

"I  must  stop  here,  son." 

"Why,  father?" 

"I  must  have  something  to  drink." 

"No,  father !" 

"But,  my  boy,  I  can't  go  on!  I  can't  walk!  You 
don't  know  what  I'm  suffering!" 

"No,  father !" 

"I've  got  the  money  left — I'm  not  asking  you.  I'll 
come  right  with  you — on  my  word  of  honor  I  will !" 

And  so  they  would  fight  it  out — all  the  way  back  to 
the  lodging-house  where  they  lived,  and  where  the  mother 
sat  and  wept.  And  here  they  would  put  him  to  bed,  and 
lock  up  his  clothing  to  keep  him  in  ;  and  here,  with  drugs 
and  mineral-waters,  and  perhaps  a  doctor  to  help,  they 
would  struggle  with  him,  and  tend  him  until  he  was  on 
his  feet  again.  Then,  with  clothing  newly-brushed  and 


6  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

face  newly-shaven  he  would  go  back  to  the  world  Oxanr- 
and  the  boy  would  go  back  to  his  dreams. 

§  52.  SUCH  was  the  life  of  Thyrsis,  from  earliest 
childhood  to  maturity.  His  father's  was  a  heritage  of 
gentle  breeding  and  high  traditions — his  forefathers 
were  cavaliers,  and  had  served  the  State.  And  now  it 
had  come  to  this — to  hall  bedrooms  in  lodging-houses, 
and  a  lif e-and-death  grapple  with  destruction !  And 
when  Thyrsis  came  to  study  the  problem,  he  found  that 
it  was  a  struggle  without  hope ;  his  father  was  a  man 
in  a  trap. 

He  was  what  people  called  a  "drummer".  He  was  de 
pendent  for  his  living  upon  the  favor  of  certain  mer 
chants — men  for  the  most  part  of  low  icjeals,  who  came 
to  the  city  in  search  of  their  low  pleasures.  One  met 
them  by  waiting  about  in  the  lobbies  of  hotels,  and  in 
the  bar-rooms  which  they  frequented;  and  always  the 
first  sign  of  fellowship  with  them  was  to  have  a  drink. 
And  this  was  the  field  on  which  the  battle  had  to  be 
fought ! 

He  would  hold  out  for  months — half  a  year,  perhaps 
— drinking  lemonade  and  putting  up  with  their  raillery. 
And  then  he  would  begin  with  ginger-ale;  and  then  it 
would  come  to  beer ;  and  then  to  whiskey.  He  was  al 
ways  devising  new  plans  to  control  himself ;  always  per 
suading  himself  that  he  had  solved  the  problem.  He 
would  not  drink  in  the  morning ;  he  would  not  drink  until 
after  dinner ;  he  would  not  drink  alone — and  so  on  with 
out  end.  His  whole  life  was  drink,  and  all  his  thoughts 
were  of  drink — the  odor  of  it  always  in  his  nostrils,  the 
image  of  it  always  before  his  eyes. 

And  the  grimness  of  his  fate  lay  here — that  it  was  by 
his  best  qualities  that  he  was  betrayed.  If  he  had  been 


THE   VICTIM 

hard  and  mercenary,  like  some  of  those  who  preyed  upon 
him,  there  might  have  been  hope.  But  he  was  generous 
and  free-hearted,  a  slave  to  his  impulses  of  friendship. 
And  this  was  what,  made  the  struggle  such  a  cruel  one 
to  Thyrsis ;  it  was  like  the  sight  of  some  noble  animal 
basely  snared. 

From  his  earliest  days  the  boy  had  watched  these 
forces  working  themselves  out.  The  gentleman  and  the 
"drummer"  fought  for  supremacy,  and  step  by  step  the 
soul  of  the  man  was  fashioned  to  the  work  he  did.  To 
succeed  with  his  customers  he  must  share  their  ideas  and 
their  tastes  ;  and  so  he  was  bitter  against  reformers,  who 
interfered  with  the  gaieties  of  the  city,  with  no  consider 
ation  for  the  tastes  of  "buyers."  But  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  would  come  a  time  of  renunciation,  when  he  would 
be  all  enthusiasm  for  temperance. 

He  was  full  of  old-fashioned  ideas,  which  would  take 
the  quaintest  turns  of  reactionism ;  his  politics  were 
summed  up  in  the  phrase  that  he  "would  rather  vote  for 
a  nigger  than  a  Republican" ;  but  then,  in  the  same 
breath,  he  would  announce  some  fine  and  noble  sentiment, 
out  of  the  traditions  of  a  forgotten  past.  He  was  the 
soul  of  courtesy  to  women,  and  of  loyalty  to  friends. 
He  worshipped  General  Lee  and  the  old  time  "Virginia 
gentleman"  ;  and  those  with  whom  he  lived,  and  for  whose 
unclean  profits  he  sold  himself,  never  guessed  the  depths 
of  his  contempt  for  all  they  stood  for.  They  had  the 
dollars,  they  were  on  top ;  but  some  day  the  nemesis  of 
Good-breeding  would  smite  them — the  army  of  the 
ghosts  of  Gentility  would  rise,  and  with  "Marse  Robert" 
and  "Jeb"  Stuart  at  their  head, 'would  sweep  away  the 
hordes  of  commercialdom. 

Thyrsis  saw  a  great  deal  of  this  forgotten  chivalry. 
His  nursery  had  been  haunted  by  such  musty  phantoms ; 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  when  he  first  came  to  the  Northern  city,  he  stayed 
at  a  hotel  which  was  frequented  by  people  who  lived  in 
this  past — old  ladies  who  were  proud  and  prim,  and  old 
gentlemen  who  were  quixotic  and  numerous,  young  ladies 
who  were  "belles,"  and  young  gentlemen  who  aspired 
to  be  "blades".  It  was  a  world  that  would  have  made 
happy  the  soul  of  any  writer  of  romances ;  but  to  Thyr- 
sis  in  earliest  childhood  the  fates  had  given  the  gift  of 
seeing  beneath  the  shams  of  things,  and  to  him  this  dead 
Aristocracy  cried  out  loudly  for  burial.  There  was  an 
incredible  amount  of  drunkenness,  and  of  debauchery 
scarcely  hidden ;  there  wras  pretense  strutting  like  a 
peacock,  and  avarice  skulking  like  a  hound ;  there  were 
jealousy,  and  base  snobbery,  and  raging  spite,  and  a 
breath  of  suspicion  and  scandal  hanging  like  a  poison 
ous  cloud  over  everything.  These  people  came  and  went, 
an  endless  procession  of  them ;  they  laughed  and  danced 
and  gossiped  and  drank  their  way  through  the  boy's  life, 
and  unconsciously  he  judged  them,  and  hated  them  and 
feared  them.  It  was  not  by  such  that  his  destiny  was  to 
be  shaped. 

Most  of  them  were  poor ;  not  an  honest  poverty,  but 
a  sham  and  artificial  poverty — the  inability  to  dress  as 
others  did,  and  to  lose  money  at  "bridge"  and  "poker", 
and  to  pay  the  costs  of  their  self-indulgences.  As  for 
Thyrsis  and  his  parents,  they  always  paid  what  they 
owed ;  but  they  were  not  always  able  to  pay  it  when  they 
owed  it,  and  they  suffered  all  the  agonies  and  humilia 
tions  of  those  who  did  not  pay  at  all.  There  was 
scarcely  ever  a  week  when  this  canker  of  want  did  not 
gnaw  at.  them;  their  life  was  one  endless  and  sordid 
struggle  to  make  last  year's  clothing  look  like  new, 
and  to  find  some  boarding-house  that  was  cheaper  and 
yet  respectable.  There  was  endless  wrangling  and  strife 


THE   VICTIM  9 

and  worry  over  money;  and  every  year  the  task  was 
harder,  the  standards  lower,  the  case  more  hopeless. 

There  were  rich  relatives,  a  world  of  real  luxury  up 
above — the  thing  that  called  itself  "Society".  And 
Thyrsis  was  a  student  and  a  bright  lad,  and  he  was 
welcome  there ;  he  might  have  spread  his  wings  and 
flown  away  from  this  sordidness.  But  duty  held  him, 
and  love  and  memory  held  him  still  tighter.  For  his 
father  worshipped  him,  and  craved  his  help ;  to  the  last 
hour  of  his  dreadful  battle,  he  fought  to  keep  his  son's 
regard — he  prayed  for  it,  with  tears  in  his  eyes  and 
anguish  in  his  voice.  And  so  the  boy  had  to  stand  by. 
And  that  meant  that  he  grew  up  in  a  torture-house, 
he  drank  a  cup  of  poison  to  its  bitter  dregs.  To  others 
his  father  was  merely  a  gross  little  man,  with  sordid 
ideas  and  low  tastes ;  but  to  Thyrsis  he  was  a  man  with 
the  terror  of  the  hunted  creatures  in  his  soul,  and  the 
furies  of  madness  cracking  their  whips  about  his  ears. 

There  was  only  one  ending  possible — it  worked  itselt 
out  with  the  remorseless  precision  of  a  machine.  The 
soul  that  fought  was  smothered  and  stifled,  its  voice 
grew  fainter  and  feebler ;  the  agony  and  the  shame  grew 
hotter,  the  suffering  more  cruel,  the  despair  more  black. 
Until  at  last  they  found  him  in  a  delirium,  and  took  him 
to  a  private  hospital;  and  thither  went  Thyrsis,  now 
grown  to  be  a  man,  and  sat  in  a  dingy  reception-room, 
and  a  dingy  doctor  came  to  him  and  said,  "Do  you 
wish  to  see  the  body?"  And  Thyrsis  answered,  in  a 
low  voice,  "No." 

§  3.  So  it  was  that  the  soul  of  this  lad  had  grown 
sombre,  and  taken  to  brooding  upon  the  mysteries  of 
fate.  Life  was  no  jest  and  no  holiday,  it  was  no  place 
for  shams  and  self-deceptions.  It  was  a  place  where 


10  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

cruel  enemies  set  traps  for  the  unwary;  a  field  where 
blind  and  merciless  forces  ranged,  unhindered  by  man 
or  God. 

Thyrsis  could  not  have  told  how  soon  in  life  this 
sense  had  come  to  him.  In  his  earliest  childhood  he 
had  known  that  his  father  was  preyed  upon,  just  as 
certainly  as  any  wild  thing  in  the  forest.  At  first  the 
enemies  had  been  saloon-keepers,  and  wicked  men  who 
tempted  him  to  drink  with  them.  The  names  of  these 
men  were  household  words  to  him,  portents  of  terror ; 
they  peopled  his  imagination  as  epic  figures,  such  as 
Black  Douglas  must  have  been  to  the  children  of  the 
Northern  Border. 

But  then,  with  widening  intelligence,  it  became  cer 
tain  social  forces,  at  first  dimly  apprehended.  It  was 
the  god  of  "business" — before  which  all  things  fair 
and  noble  went  down.  It  was  "business"  that  kept  vice 
triumphant  in  the  city ;  it  was  because  of  "business" 
that  the  saloons  could  not  be  closed  even  on  Sunday, 
so  that  the  father  might  be  at  home  one  day  in  seven. 
And  was  it  not  in  search  of  "business"  that  he  was  driven 
forth  to  loaf  in  hotel-lobbies  and  bar-rooms? 

Who  was  to  blame  for  this,  Thyrsis  did  not  know ; 
but  certain  men  made  profit  of  it — and  these,  too,  were 
ignoble  men.  He  knew  this ;  for  now  and  then  his 
father's  employers  would  honor  the  little  family  with 
some  kind  of  an  invitation,  and  they  would  have  to 
swallow  their  pride  and  go.  So  Thyrsis  grew  up,  with 
the  sense  of  a  great  evil  loose  in  the  world ;  a  wrong, 
of  which  the  world  did  not  know.  And  within  him  grew 
a  passionate  longing  to  cry  aloud  to  others,  to  open 
their  eyes  to  this  truth! 

Outwardly  he  was  like  other  boys,  eager  and  cheerful, 
even  boisterous ;  but  within  was  this  hidden  thing,  which 


THE   VICTIM  11 

brooded  and  questioned.  Life  had  made  him  into  an 
ascetic.  He  must  be  stern,  even  merciless,  with  him 
self — because  of  the  fear  that  was  in  him,  and  in  his 
mother  as  well.  The  fear  that  self-indulgence  might 
lay  its  grisly  paws  upon  him!  The  fear  that  he,  too, 
might  fall  into  the  trap ! 

It  was  not  merely  that  he  never  touched  stimulants ; 
he  had  an  instinct  against  all  things  that  were  soften 
ing  and  enervating,  all  things  that  tempted  and  en 
slaved.  For  him  was  the  morning-air,  and  the  shock 
of  cold  water,  and  the  hardness  of  the  wild  things  of 
the  open.  Other  people  did  not  feel  this  way ;  other 
people  pampered  themselves  and  defiled  themselves — 
and  so  Thyrsis  went  apart.  He  lived  quite  alone  with 
his  thoughts,  he  had  never  a  chum,  scarcely  even  any 
friends.  Where  in  the  long  procession  of  lodging  and 
boarding-houses  and  summer-resorts  should  he  meet 
people  who  knew  what  he  knew  about  life?  Where  in 
all  the  world  should  he  meet  them,  save  in  the  books  of 
great  men  in  times  past? 

There  was  not  much  of  what  is  called  "culture"  in 
his  family ;  no  music  at  all,  and  no  poetry.  But 
there  were  novels,  and  there  were  libraries  where  one 
could  get  more  of  these,  so  Thyrsis  became  a  devourer 
of  stories ;  he  would  disappear,  and  they  would  find  him 
at  meal-times,  hidden  in  a  clump  of  bushes,  or  in  a 
corner  behind  a  sofa — anywhere  out  of  the  world. 
He  read  whole  libraries  of  adventure:  Mayne-Reid  and 
Henty,  and  then  Cooper  and  Stevenson  and  Scott.  And 
then  came  more  serious  novels — "Don  Quixote"  and 
"Les  Miserables,"  George  Eliot,  whom  he  loved,  and 
Dickens,  whose  social  protest  thrilled  him ;  and  chief est 
of  all  Thackeray,  who  moulded  his  thought.  Thackeray 
knew  the  world  that  he  knew,  Thackeray  saw  to  the 


12  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

heart  of  it;  and  no  high-souled  lad  who  had  read  him 
and  worshipped  him  was  ever  after  to  be  lured  by  the 
glamor  of  the  "great"  world  — a  world  whose  greatness 
was  based  upon  selfishness  and  greed. 

Thyrsis  knew  no  foreign  language,  and  fate  or  in 
stinct  kept  him  from  those  writers  who  jested  with  un- 
cleanness ;  so  he  was  virginal,  and  pure  in  all  his 
imaginings.  Other  lads  exchanged  confidences  in  for 
bidden  things,  they  broke  down  the  barriers  and  tore 
away  the  veils ;  but  Thyrsis  had  never  breathed  a  word 
about  matters  of  sex  to  any  living  creature.  He  pon 
dered  and  guessed,  but  no  one  knew  his  thoughts ;  and 
this  was  a  crucial  thing,  the  secret  of  much  of  his 
aloofness. 

§  4f.  IN  one  of  the  early  boarding-houses  there  had 
been  a  little  girl,  and  the  families  had  become  intimate. 
But  the  two  children  disliked  each  other,  and  kept  apart 
all  they  could.  Thyrsis  was  domineering  and  imperious, 
and  things  must  always  be  his  way.  He  was  given  to 
rebellion,  whereas  Corydon  was  gentle  and  meek,  and 
submitted  to  confinements  and  prohibitions  in  a  quite 
disgraceful  manner.  She  was  a  pretty  little  girl,  with 
great  black  eyes ;  and  because  she  was  silent  and  shy, 
he  set  her  down  as  "stupid",  and  went  his  way. 

They  spent  a  summer  in  the  country  together,  where 
Thyrsis  possessed  himself  of  a  sling-shot,  and  took  to 
collecting  the  skins  of  squirrels  and  chipmunks.  Cory 
don  was  horrified  at  this ;  and  by  way  of  helping  her 
to  overcome  her  squeamishness  he  would  make  her  carry 
home  the  bleeding  corpses.  He  took  to  raising,  young 
birds,  also,  and  soon  had  quite  an  aviary — two  robins, 
and  a  crow,  and  a  survivor  from  a  brood  of  "cherry- 
birds."  The  feeding  of  these  nestlings  was  no  small 


THE   VICTIM  IS 

cask,  but  Thyrsis  went  fishing  when  the  spirit  moved 
him,  secure  in  the  certainty  that  the  calls  of  the  hungry 
creatures  would  keep  Corydon  at  home. 

This  was  the  way  of  it,  until  Corydon  began  to 
blossom  into  a  young  lady,  beautiful  and  tenderly- 
fashioned.  Thyrsis  still  saw  her  now  and  then,  and  he 
made  attempts  to  share  his  higher  joys  with  her.  He 
had  become  a  lover  of  poetry ;  once  they  walked  by  the 
seashore,  and  he  read  her  "Alexander's  Feast",  thrilling 
with  delight  in  its  resounding  phrases: 

"Break  his  bands  of  sleep  asunder, 
And  rouse  him  like  a  rattling  peal  of  thunder !" 

But  Corydon  had  never  heard  of  Timotheus,  and  she 
had  not  been  taught  to  exploit  her  emotions.  She  could 
only  say  that  she  did  not  understand  it  very  well. 

And  then,  on  another  occasion,  Thyrsis  endeavored 
to  tell  her  about  Berkeley,  whom  he  had  been  reading. 
But  Corydon  did  not  take  to  the  sensational  philosophy 
either ;  she  would  come  back  again  and  again  to  the 
evasion  of  old  Dr.  Johnson — "When  I  kick  a  stone,  I 
know  the  stone  is  there!" 

This  girl  was  like  a  beautiful  flower,  Thyrsis  told 
himself — like  all  the  flowers  that  had  gone  before  her, 
and  all  those  that  would  come  after,  from  generation 
to  generation.  She  fitted  so  perfectly  into  her  environ 
ment,  she  grew  so  calmly  and  serenely ;  she  wore  pretty 
dresses,  and  helped  to  serve  tea,  and  was  graceful  and 
sweet — and  with  never  an  idea  that  there  was  anything 
in  life  beyond  these  things.  So  Thyrsis  pondered  as 
he  went  his  way,  complacent  over  his  own  perspicacity ; 
and  got  not  even  a  whiff  of  smoke  from  the  volcano  of 


14  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

rebellion  and  misery  that  was  seething  deep  down  in 
her  soul! 

The  choosers  of  the  unborn  souls  had  played  a  strange 
fantasy  here;  they  had  stolen  one  of  the  daughters  of 
ancient  Greece,  and  set  her  down  in  this  metropolis  of 
commercialdom.  For  Corydon  might  have  been  Nau- 
sikaa  herself;  she  might  have  marched  in  the  Pan- 
athenaic  procession,  with  one  of  the  sacred  vessels  in  her 
hands ;  she  might  have  run  in  the  Attic  games,  bare- 
limbed  and  fearless.  Hers  was  a  soul  that  leaped  to 
the  call  of  joy,  that  thrilled  at  the  faintest  touch  of 
beauty.  Above  all  else,  she  was  born  for  music — she 
could  have  sung  so  that  the  world  would  have  remem 
bered  it.  And  she  was  pent  in  a  dingy  boarding-house, 
with  no  point  of  contact  with  anything  about  her — with 
no  human  soul  to  whom  she  could  whisper  her  despair ! 

They  sent  her  to  a  public-school,  where  the  sad-eyed 
drudges  of  the  traders  came  to  be  drilled  for  their 
tasks.  They  harrowed  her  with  arithmetic  and  gram 
mar,  which  she  abhorred;  they  taught  her  patriotic 
songs,  about  a  country  to  which  she  did  not  belong. 
And  also,  they  sent  her  to  Sunday-school,  which  was 
worse  yet.  She  had  the  strangest,  instinctive  hatred 
of  their  religion,  with  all  that  it  stood  for.  The  sight 
of  a  clergyman  with  his  vestments  and  his  benedictions 
would  make  her  fairly  bristle  with  hostility.  They 
talked  to  her  about  her  sins,  and  she  did  not  know  what 
they  meant;  they  pried  into  the  state  of  her  soul,  and 
she  shrunk  from  them  as  if  they  had  been  hairy  spiders. 
Here,  too,  they  taught  her  to  sing — droning  hymns 
that  were  a  mockery  of  all  the  joys  of  life. 

So  Corydon  devoured  her  own  heart  in  secret ;  and 
in  time  a  dreadful  thing  came  to  happen — the  stagnant 
soul  beginning  to  fester.  One  day  the  girl,  whose  heart 


THE   VICTIM  15 

was  the  quintessence  of  all  innocence,  happened  to  see 
a  low  word  scribbled  upon  a  fence.  And  now — they  had 
urged  her  to  discover  sins,  and  she  discovered  them.  Sup 
pose  that  word  were  to  stay  in  her  mind  and  haunt  her — • 
suppose  that  she  were  not  able  to  forget  it,  try  as  she 
would !  And  of  course  she  tried ;  and  the  more  she 
tried,  the  less  she  succeeded ;  and  so  came  the  discovery 
that  she  was  a  lost  soul  and  a  creature  of  depravity ! 
The  thought  occurred  to  her,  that  she  might  go  on  to 
think  of  other  words,  and  to  think  of  images  and  ac 
tions  as  well;  she  might  be  unable  to  forget  any  of 
them — her  mind  might  become  a  storehouse  of  such 
horrors!  And  so  the  maiden  out  of  ancient  Greece 
would  lie  awake  all  night  and  wrestle  with  fiends,  until 
she  was  bathed  in  a  perspiration. 

§  5.  ABOUT  this  time  Thyrsis  was  making  his  debut 
as  an  author.  He  had  discovered  a  curious  knack  in 
himself,  a  turn  for  making  verses  of  a  sort  which  were 
pleasing  to  children.  They  came  from  some  little  corner 
of  his  consciousness,  he  scarcely  knew  how;  but  there 
was  a  paper  that  was  willing  to  buy  them,  and  to  pay 
him  the  princely  sum  of  five  dollars  a  week !  This  would 
pay  for  his  food  and  his  hall  bedroom,  or  for  board 
at  some  farm  in  the  summer;  and  so  for  several  years 
Thyrsis  was  free. 

He  told  a  falsehood  about  his  age,  and  entered  col 
lege,  and  buried  himself  up  to  the  eyes  in  work.  This 
was  a  college  in  a  city,  and  a  poor  college,  where  the 
students  all  lived  at  home,  and  had  nothing  to  do  but 
study ;  and  so  Thyrsis  missed  all  that  beneficent  illumina 
tion  known  as  "student-life."  He  never  hurrahed  at 
foot-ball  contests,  nor  did  he  dress  himself  in  honorific 
garments,  nor  stupify  himself  at  "smokers."  Being 


16  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

democratic,  and  without  thought  of  setting  himself  up 
over  others,  he  was  unaware  of  his  greatest  opportuni 
ties,  and  when  they  invited  him  into  a  fraternity,  he 
declined.  Once  or  twice  he  found  himself  roaming  the 
streets  at  night  with  a  crowd  of  students,  emitting 
barbaric  -screechings ;  but  this  made  him  feel  silly,  and 
so  he  lagged  behind  and  went  home. 

The  college  served  its  purpose,  in  introducing  him 
to  the  world  of  knowledge ;  but  that  did  not  take  long, 
and  afterwards  it  was  all  in  his  way.  The  mathematics 
were  a  discipline,  and  in  them  he  rejoiced  as  a  strong 
man  to  run  a  race;  and  this  was  true  also  of  the  sci 
ences,  and  of  history — the  only  trouble  was  that  he 
would  finish  the  text-books  in  the  first  few  weeks,  and 
after  that  there  was  nothing  to  do  save  to  compose 
verses  in  class,  and  to  make  sketches  of  the  professors. 
But  as  for  the  "languages"  and  the  "literatures"  they 
taught  him — in  the  end  Thyrsis  came  to  forgive  them, 
because  he  saw  that  they  did  not  know  what  languages 
and  literatures  were.  On  this  account  he  took  to  beg 
ging  leave  of  absence  on  grounds  of  his  poverty ;  and 
then  he  would  go  home  and  spend  his  days  and  nights 
in  learning. 

One  could  get  so  much  for  so  little,  in  this  wonderful 
world  of  mind !  For  eight  cents  he  picked  up  a  paper 
volume  of  Emerson's  "Essays" ;  and  in  this  shrewd  and 
practical  nobility  was  so  much  that  he  was  seeking  in 
life!  And  then  he  stumbled  upon  a  fifteen-cent  edition 
of  "Sartor  Resartus",  and  took  that  home  and  read  it. 
It  was  like  the  clash  of  trumpets  and  cymbals  to  him; 
it  made  his  whole  being  leap.  Hour  after  hour  he  read, 
breathless,  like  a  man  bewitched,  the  whole  night 
through.  He  would  cry  aloud  with  delight,  or  drop  the 
book  and  pound  his  knee  and  laugh  over  the  demoniac 


THE   VICTIM  17 

power  of  it.  The  next  day  he  began  the  "French  Revo 
lution"  ;  and  after  that,  alas,  he  found  there  was  no 
more — for  Carlyle  had  turned  his  back  upon  democracy, 
and  so  Thyrsis  turned  his  back  upon  Carlyle. 

For  this  was  one  of  the  forces  which  had  had  to  do 
with  the  shaping  of  his  thought.  Beginning  in  the 
public-schools  he  had  learned  about  his  country — the 
country  which  was  his,  if  not  Corydon's.  He  had  read 
in  its  history — Irving's  "Life  of  Washington,"  and  ten 
great  volumes  about  Lincoln ;  so  he  had  come  to  under 
stand  that  salvation  is  of  the  people,  and  that,  those 
things  which  the  people  do  not  do — those  things  have 
not  yet  been  done.  So  no  one  could  deceive  him,  or 
lead  him  astray;  he  might  laugh  with  the  Tories,  and 
even  love  them  for  their  foibles — quaint  old  Samuel 
Johnson,  for  instance,  because  he  was  poor  and  sturdy, 
and  had  stood  by  his  trade  of  bookman ;  but  at  bottom 
Thyrsis  knew  that  all  these  men  were  gilding  a  corpse. 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  Browning  and  Swinburne 
— he  followed  each  one  as  far  as  their  revolutionary  im 
pulse  lasted ;  and  after  that  there  was  no  more  in  them 
for  him.  Even  Ruskin,  who  taught  him  the  possibilities 
of  English  prose,  and  opened  his  eyes  to  the  form  and 
color  of  the  world  of  nature — even  Ruskin  he  gave  up, 
because  he  was  a  philanthropist  and  not  a  democrat. 

Thyrsis  had  been  brought  up  as  a  devout  Episco 
palian.  They  had  dressed  him  in  scarlet  and  white  to 
carry  the  train  of  the  bishop  at  confirmation,  and  had 
sent  him  to  an  afternoon  service  every  day  through 
out  Lent.  Early  in  life  he  had  stumbled  on  a  paper 
copy  of  Paine's  "Age  of  Reason,"  and  he  read  it  with 
horror,  and  then  conducted  a  private  auto  da  fe.  But 
the  questions  of  the  book  stayed  with  him,  and  as  years 
passed  they  clamored  more  loudly.  What  would  have 


18  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

happened,  astronomically,  if  the  sun  had!  stood  still? 
And  how  many  different  species  would  have  had  to  go 
into  the  ark?  And  what  was  the  size  of  a  whale's 
gullet,  and  the  probable  digestive  powers  of  a  whale's 
stomach  ? 

And  then  came  more  fundamental  difficulties.  Could 
there,  after  all,  be  such  a  duty  as  faith  in  any  intel 
lectual  matter?  Could  there  be  any  revelation  superior 
to  reason — must  not  reason  have  once  decided  that  it 
was  a  revelation,  or  was  not?  And  what  of  all  the 
other  "revelations",  which  all  the  other  peoples  of  the 
world  accepted?  And  then  again,  if  Jesus  had  been 
God,  could  he  really  have  been  tempted?  To  be  God 
and  man  at  the  same  time — did  that  not  mean  both  to 
know  and  not  to  know?  And  was  there  any  way 
conceivable  for  anything  to  be  God,  in  which  everything 
else  was  not  God? 

These  perplexities  and  many  others  the  boy  took  to 
his  clerical  adviser,  a  man  who  loved  him  dearly,  and 
who  gave  him  some  volumes  of  the  "Bampton  lectures" 
to  read.  Here  was  the  defense  of  Christianity,  con 
ducted  by  authorities,  and  with  scholarship  and  dig 
nity;  and  Thyrsis  found  to  his  dismay  that  the  only 
convincing  parts  of  their  books  were  where  they  gave 
a  resume  of  the  arguments  of  their  opponents.  He 
learned  in  this  way  many  difficulties  that  had  not  yet 
occurred  to  him;  and  when  he  had  got  through  with 
the  reading  his  mind  was  made  up.  If  any  man  were 
to  be  damned  for  not  believing  such  things,  then  it  was 
his  duty  as  a  thinker  to  be  damned;  and  so  he  bade 
farewell  to  the  Church — something  which  was  sad,  in 
a  way,  for  his  mother  had  been  planning  him  for  a 
bishop ! 


THE  VICTIM  19 

§  6.  BUT  Thyrsis  was  throwing  away  many  chances 
these  days.  He  went  into  the  higher  regions  to  spend 
his  Christmas  holidays ;  and  instead  of  being  tactful 
and  agreeable,  he  buried  himself  in  a  corner  of  the 
library  all  day  long.  For  Thyrsis  had  made  the 
greatest  discovery  yet — he  had  found  out  Shakespeare ! 
At  school  they  had  taught  him  "English"  by  means  of 
"to  be  or  not  to  be",  and  they  had  sought  to  trap  him 
at  examinations  by  means  of  "man's  first  disobedience 
and  the  fruit";  and  so  for  years  they  had  held  him 
back  from  the  two  great  glories  of  our  literature. 
But  now,  by  accident,  he  stumbled  into  "The  Tempest" ; 
and  after  that  he  read  every  line  of  the  plays  in  two- 
weeks. 

He  lost  his  soul  in  that  wonderland;  he  walked  and 
thought  no  more  like  the  men  of  earth — he  dwelt  with 
those  lords  and  princes  of  the  soul,  and  learned  to  speak 
their  language.  He  would  dodge  among  cable-cars 
and  trucks  with  their  heavenly  melodies  in  his  ears ;  and 
while  he  sung  them  his  eyes  flashed  and  his  heart  beat 
fast: 

"Good  night,  sweet  prince, 
And  flights  of  angels  sing  thee  to  thy  rest !" 

There  were  a  few  days  left  in  those  wondrous  holi 
days;  and  these  went  to  Milton.  There  was  a  set  of 
his  works,  enormously  expensive,  which  had  been  made 
and  purchased  with  no  idea  that  any  human  being  would 
ever  read  them.  But  Thyrsis  read  them,  and  so  all 
the  beauty  of  the  binding  was  justified.  For  hours, 
and  hours  upon  hours,  he  drank  in  that  thunderous 
music,  crying  it  aloud  with  his  hands  clenched  tightly, 
and  stopping  to  laugh  like  a  child  with  excitement : 


20  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"TV  imperial  ensign,  which  full  high  advanced, 
Shone  like  a  meteor  streaming  to  the  wind, 
With  gems  and  golden  lustre  rich  emblazed, 
Seraphic  arms  and  trophies ;  all  the  while 
Sonorous  metal  blowing  martial  sounds  I" 

And  afterwards,  when  he  came  to  the  palace  that 
"rose  like  an  exhalation",  all  of  Thyrsis'  soul  rose 
with  it.  One  summer's  day  he  stood  on  a  high  moun 
tain  with  a  railroad  in  the  valley,  and  saw  a  great* 
freight-engine  stop  still  and  pour  out  its  masses  of 
dense  black  smoke.  It  rose  in  the  breathless  air, 
straight  as  a  column,  high  and  majestic;  and  Thyrsis 
thought  of  that  line.  It  carried  him  out  into  the 
heavens,  and  he  knew  that  a  flash  of  poetry  such  as 
that  is  the  meeting  of  man's  groping  hand  with  God's. 

It  was  about  here  that  a  strange  adventure  came  to 
him.  It  was  midwinter,  and  he  went  out,  long  after 
midnight,  to  walk  in  a  beautiful  garden.  A  dry 
powdery  snow  crunched  beneath  his  feet,  and  overhead 
the  stars  gleamed  and  quivered,  so  bright  that  he  felt 
like  stretching  out  his  hands  to  them.  The  world  lay 
still,  and  awful  in  its  beauty ;  and  here  suddenly,  unsus 
pected — unheralded,  and  quite  unsought — there  came 
to  Thyrsis  a  strange  and  portentous  experience,  the 
first  of  his  ecstasies. 

He  could  not  have  told  whether  he  walked  or  sat 
down,  whether  he  spoke  or  was  silent;  he  lost  all  sense 
of  his  own  existence — his  consciousness  was  given  up  to 
the  people  of  his  dreams,  the  companions  and  lovers 
of  his  fancy.  The  cold  and  snow  were  gone,  and  there 
was  a  moonlit  glade  in  a  forest ;  and  thither  they  came, 
one  by  one,  friendly  and  human,  yet  in  the  full  panoply 
of  their  splendor  and  grace.  There  were  Shelley  and 


THE   VICTIM  21 

Milton,  and  the  gentle  and  troubled  Hamlet,  and  the 
sorrowful  knight  of  la  Mancha,  with  the  irrepressible 
Falstaff  to  hearten  them  all ;  a  strangely-assorted  com 
pany,  yet  royal  spirits  all  of  them,  and  no  strangers 
to  each  other  in  their  own  world.  And  here  they 
gathered  and  conversed,  each  in  his  own  vein  and  from 
his  own  impulse,  with  gracious  fancy  and  lofty  vision 
and  heart-easing  mirth.  And  ah,  how  many  miles  would 
one  have  travelled  to  be  with  them ! 

That  was  the  burden  which  this  gift  laid  upon 
Thyrsis.  He  soon  discovered  that  these  visions  of 
wonder  came  but  once,  and  that  when  they  were  gone, 
they  were  gone  forever.  And  he  must  learn  to  grapple 
with  them  as  they  fled,  to  labor  with  them  and  to  hold 
them  fast,  at  the  cost  of  whatever  heartbreaking  strain. 
Thus  alone  could  men  have  even  the  feeblest  reflexion 
of  their  beauty — upon  which  to  feed  their  souls  forever 
after. 

§  7.  THESE  things  came  at  the  same  time  as  another 
development  in  Thyrsis'  life,  likewise  portentous  and 
unexpected.  Boyhood  was  gone,  and  manhood  had 
come.  There  was  a  bodily  change  taking  place  in  him 
— he  became  aware  of  it  with  a  start,  and  with  the 
strangest  and  most  uncomfortable  thrills.  He  did  not 
know  what  to  make  of  it,  or  what  to  do  about  it;  nor 
did  he  know  where  to  turn  for  advice. 

He  tried  to  put  it  aside,  as  a  thing  of  no  importance. 
But  it  would  not  be  put  aside — it  was  of  vast  im 
portance.  He  discovered  new  desires  in  himself,  im 
pulses  that  dominated  him  in  a  most  disturbing  way. 
He  found  that  he  took  a  new  interest  in  women  and 
young  girls;  he  wanted  to  linger  near  them,  and  their 
glances  caused  him  strange  emotions.  He  resented 


22  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

this,  as  an  invasion  of  his  privacy ;  it  was  inconsistent 
with  his  hermit-instinct.  Thyrsis  wished  no  women  in 
his  life  save  the  muses  with  their  star-sewn  garments. 
He  had  been  fond  of  a  line  from  a  sonnet  to  Milton: 

"Thy  soul  was  like  a  Star,  and  dwelt  apart." 

But  instead  of  this,  what  awful  humiliations !  In 
a  summer-resort  where  he  found  himself,  there  was  a 
girl  of  not  very  gentle  breeding,  somewhat  pudgy  and 
with  a  languishing  air.  She  liked  to  have  boys  snuggle 
down  by  her;  and  so  Thyrsis  spent  the  whole  of  one 
evening,  sitting  in  a  summer-house  with  an  arm  about 
her  waist,  dissolved  in  a  sort  of  moon-calf  sentiment- 
alism.  And  then  he  passed  the  rest  of  the  night  wander 
ing  about  in  the  forest  cursing  himself,  with  tears  of 
shame  and  vexation  in  his  eyes. 

He  was  so  ignorant  about  these  matters  that  he  did 
not  even  know  if  the  changes  that  had  taken  place  in 
him  were  normal,  or  whether  they  were  doing  him  harm. 
He  made  up  his  mind  that  he  must  have  advice;  as  it 
was  unthinkable  that  he  should  speak  about  such  shame 
ful  things  with  any  grown  person,  he  bethought  him 
self  of  a  classmate  in  college  who  was  an  earnest  and 
sober  man.  This  friend,  much  older  than  Thyrsis,  was 
the  son  of  an  evangelical  clergyman,  and  was  headed 
for  the  ministry  himself.  His  name  was  Warner,  and 
Thyrsis  had  helped  him  in  arranging  for  some  religious 
meetings  at  the  college.  Warner  had  been  shocked  by 
his  theological  irregularities  ;  but  they  were  still  friends, 
and  now  Thyrsis  sought  a  chance  to  exchange  confi 
dences  with  him. 

The  opportunity  came  while  they  were  strolling  down 
an  avenue  near  the  college,  and  a  woman  passed  them, 


THE   VICTIM  23 

a  woman  with  bold  and  hard  features,  and  obviously- 
painted  cheeks.  She  smiled  at  a  group  of  students  just 
ahead,  and  one  of  them  turned  and  walked  off  arm  in 
arm  with  her. 

"Good  heavens!"  exclaimed  Warner.  "Did  you  see 
that?" 

"Yes,"  said  Thyrsis.     "Who  is  she?" 

"She  comes  from  a  house  just  around  the  corner." 

"But  who  is  she?" 

"Why — she's   a   street-walker." 

"A  street-walker !" 

This  brought  to  Thyrsis'  mind  a  problem  that  had 
been  haunting  him  for  a  year  or  two.  Always  when 
he  walked  about  the  streets  at  night  there  were  women 
who  smiled  at  him  and  whispered.  And  he  knew  that 
these  were  bad  women,  and  shrunk  from  them.  But 
just  what  did  they  mean? 

"What  does  she  do  ?"  he  asked  again. 

"Why,  don't  you  know  what  a  street-walker  is?" 

"Not  very  well,"  said  Thyrsis. 

It  took  some  time  for  him  to  get  the  desired  informa 
tion,  because  the  other  could  not  realize  the  depths  of 
his  ignorance.  "They  sell  themselves  to  men,"  he  said. 

"But  what  for?"  asked  Thyrsis.  "You  don't  mean 
that  they— they  let  them " 

"They  have  intercourse  together.     Of  course." 

Thyrsis  was  almost  dumb  with  dismay.  "But — I 
should  think  they  would  have  children!"  he  exclaimed. 

"Good  Lord,  man !"  laughed  the  other.  "Where  do 
you  keep  yourself,  anyway?" 

But  Thyrsis  was  too  much  shaken  to  think  of  being 
ashamed.  This  was  a  most  appalling  revelation  to 
him — it  opened  quite  a  new  vista  of  life's  possibilities. 


24  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"But  why  should  they  do  such  things?"  he  cried. 

"The7  earn  their  living  that  way,"  said  the  other. 

"But  why  that  way?" 

"I  don't  know.  They  are  that  kind  of  women,  I 
suppose." 

And  so  Warner  went  on  to  expound  to  him  the  facts 
of  prostitution,  and  all  the  abysses  of  human  depravity 
that  lie  thereabouts.  And  incidentally  the  boy  got  a 
chance  to  ask  his  questions,  and  to  get  a  common-sense 
view  of  his  perplexities.  Also  he  got  some  understand 
ing  of  human  nature,  and  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lived. 

Here  was  Warner,  a  man  of  twenty-four,  and  of  a 
devout,  if  somewhat  dull  and  plodding  conscientious 
ness ;  and  the  last  eight  or  nine  years  of  his  life  had 
been  one  torment  because  of  the  cravings  of  lust.  He 
had  never  committed  an  act  of  unchastity — or  at  least 
he  told  Thyrsis  that  he  had  not.  But  he  was  never  free 
from  the  impulse,  and  he  had  no  conception  of  the  possi 
bility  of  being  free.  His  desire  was  a  purely  brute 
one — untouched  by  any  intellectual  or  spiritual,  or  even 
any  sentimental  color.  He  desired  woman,  as  woman- 
it  mattered  not  what  woman.  How  low  his  impulses 
took  him  Thyrsis  realized  with  a  shudder  from  one  re 
mark  that  he  made — that  his  poverty  did  not  help  him 
to  live  virtuously,  for  about  the  docks  and  in  the 
workingmen's  quarters  there  were  women  who  would  sell 
themselves  for  fifty  cents  a  night. 

This  man's  whole  life  was  determined  by  that  crav 
ing  ;  in  fact  it  seemed  to  Thyrsis  that  his  God  had  made 
the  universe  with  relation  to  it — a  heaven  to  reward  him 
if  he  abstained,  and  a  hell  to  punish  him  if  he  yielded. 
It  was  because  of  this  that  he  clung  to  the  church,  and 
shrunk  from  any  dallying  with  "rationalism".  He  dis- 


THE   VICTIM  25 

approved  of  the  theatre,  because  it  appealed  to  these 
cravings ;  he  disapproved  of  all  pictures  and  statues  of 
the  nude  human  form,  because  the  sight  of  them  over 
mastered  him.  For  the  same  reason  he  shrunk  from  all 
impassioned  poetry,  and  from  dancing,  and  even  .from 
non-religious  music.  He  was  rigid  in  his  conformance 
to  all  the  social  conventions,  because  they  served  the 
purpose  of  saving  him  and  his  young  women-friends 
from  temptation ;  and  he  looked  forward  to  the  com 
pletion  of  a  divinity-course  as  his  goal,  because  then 
he  would  be  able  to  settle  down  and  marry,  and  so  at 
last  to  gratify  his  desires.  He  stated  this  quite  baldly, 
quoting  the  authority  of  St.  Paul,  that  it  was  "better 
to  marry  than  to  burn." 

This  conversation  brought  Thyrsis  to  a  realization 
that  there  was  a  great  deal  in  the  world  that  was  not 
found  in  the  poetry  of  Tennyson  and  Longfellow ;  and 
BO  he  began  to  pry  into  the  souls  of  others  of  his  fel 
low-students. 

8.     WARNER  had  given  him  the  religious  attitude; 

now  he  went  after  the  scientific.  There  was  a  tall, 
eager-faced  young  man,  who  proclaimed  himself  a 
disciple  of  Haeckel  and  Herbert  Spencer,  and  even  went 
so  far  as  to  quote  Schopenhauer  in  class.  Walking 
home  together  one  day,  these  two  fell  to  arguing  the 
freedom  of  the  will,  and  the  nature  of  motives  and  de 
sires,  and  what  power  one  has  over  them;  and  so 
Thyrsis  made  the  startling  discovery  that  this  young 
man,  having  accepted  the  doctrine  of  "determinism," 
had  drawn  therefrom  the  corollary  that  he  had  to  do 
what  he  wanted  to  do,  and  so  was  powerless  to  resist 
his  sex-impulses.  For  the  past  year  this  youth,  a  fine, 
intellectual  and  honest  student,  had  gone  at  regular 


26  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

intervals  to  visit  a  prostitute;  and  with  entirely  scien 
tific  and  cold-blooded  precision  he  outlined  to  Thyrsis 
the  means  he  took  to  avoid  contracting  disease.  Thyrsis 
listened,  feeling  as  he  might  have  felt  in  a  slaughter 
house;  and  when,  returning  to  the  deterministic  hy 
pothesis,  he  asked  how  it  was  that  he  had  managed  to 
escape  this  "necessity",  he  was  told  that  it  must  be  be 
cause  he  was  of  a  weaker  and  less  manly  constitution. 

And  there  was  yet  another  type:  a  man  with  whom 
there  was  no  difficulty  in  bringing  up  the  subject,  for 
the  reason  that  he  was  always  bringing  it  up  himself. 
Thyrsis  sat  next  to  him  in  a  class  in  Latin,  and  noticed 
that  whenever  the  text  contained  any  hint  at  matters  of 
sex — which  was  not  infrequent  in  Juvenal  and  Horace — 
this  man  would  look  at  him  with  a  grin  and  a  sly  wink. 
And  sometimes  Thyrsis  would  make  a  casual  remark  in 
^conversation,  and  the  man  would  twist  it  out  of  its 
meaning,  or  make  a  pun  out  of  it — to  find  some  excuse 
for  his  satyr's  leer.  So  at  last  Thyrsis  was  moved  to 
say  to  him — "Don't  you  ever  realize  what  a  state  you've 
got  your  mind  into?" 

"How  do  you  mean?"  asked  the  man. 

"Why,  everything  in  the  world  seems  to  suggest 
obscenity  to  you.  You're  always  looking  for  it  and 
always  finding  it — you  don't  seem  to  care  about  any 
thing  else." 

The  other  was  interested  in  that  view  of  it,  and  he 
acknowledged  with  mild  amusement  that  it  was  true ; 
apparently  it  was  a  novelty  to  him  to  discuss  such 
matters  seriously.  He  told  Thyrsis  that  he  could  not 
remember  having  ever  restrained  a  sexual  impulse  in 
his  life.  He  thought  of  lust  in  connection  with  every 
woman  he  met,  and  his  mind  was  a  sto/rehouse  of  smut. 
And  yet  he  was  not  a  bad  fellow,  ir'x  other  ways ;  he 


THE   VICTIM  27 

was  handsome,  and  a  good  deal  of  an  athlete,  and  was 
planning  to  be  a  physician.  "You'll  find  most  all  the 
fellows  ocre  the  same,"  he  said. 

Not  long  after  this,  Thyrsis  was  selected  to  repre 
sent  his  college  on  a  debating-team,  and  he  went  away 
to  another  city  and  was  invited  to  a  fraternity-house ; 
and  here,  suddenly,  he  discovered  how  much  of  "college- 
life"  he  had  been  missing.  This  was  a  fashionable 
university,  and  he  met  the  sons  of  wealthy  parents. 
About  a  score  of  them  lived  in  this  fraternity-house, 
without  any  sort  of  supervision  or  restraint.  They  ate 
in  a  beautiful  oak-panelled  dining-room  adorned  with 
drinking-steins ;  and  throughout  the  meal  they  treated 
their  visitor  to  such  an  orgy  of  obscenity  as  he  had 
never  dreamed  of  in  his  life  before.  Thyrsis  was 
trapped  and  could  not  get  away ;  and  it  seemed  to  him 
when  he  rose  from  the  table  that  there  was  nothing 
left  clean  in  all  God's  universe.  These  boys  appeared 
to  vie  with  each  other  in  blasphemous  abandonment; 
and  it  was  not  simply  wantonness — it  was  sprawling  and 
disgusting  filthiness. 

One  of  this  group  took  Thyrsis  driving,  and  was 
led  to  talk.  Here  was  a  youth  whose  father  was  the 
president  of  a  great  manufacturing-enterprise,  and 
supplied  him  with  unlimited  funds ;  which  money  the  boy 
used  to  divert  himself  in  the  pursuit  of  young  women. 
Sometimes  he  had  stooped  so  low  as  manicure-girls  and 
shop-clerks  and  stenographers ;  but  for  the  most  part 
he  sought  actresses  and  chorus-girls — they  had  more 
intelligence  and  spirit,  he  explained,  they  were  harder 
to  win.  He  had  his  way  with  them,  partly  because  he 
was  handsome  and  clever,  but  mainly  because  he  was 
the  keeper  of  the  keys  of  opportunity.  It  was  his 
to  dispense  auto-rides  and  champagne-suppers,  and 


28  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

flowers  and  jewels,  and  all  things  else  that  were  desir 
able  in  life. 

Thyrsis  was  appalled  at  the  hardness  and  the  utter 
ruthlessness  of  this  man — he  saw  him  as  a  young 
savage  turned  loose  to  prey  in  a  civilized  community. 
He  had  the  most  supreme  contempt  for  his  victims — 
that  was  what  they  were  made  for,  and  he  paid  them 
their  price.  Nor  was  this  just  because  they  were 
women,  it  was  a  matter  of  class ;  the  young  man  had 
a  mother  and  sisters,  to  whom  he  applied  quite  other 
standards.  But  Thyrsis  found  himself  wondering  how 
long,  with  this  contagion  raging  among  the  fathers 
and  the  sons,  it  would  be  possible  to  keep  the  mothers 
and  the  daughters  sterilized. 

§  9.  THESE  discoveries  came  one  by  one ;  but  Thyrsis 
saw  enough  at  the  outset  to  make  it  clear  that  the  time 
had  come  for  him  to  gird  up  his  loins.  The  choice 
of  Hercules  was  before  him ;  and  he  did  not  intend  that 
the  course  of  his  life  was  to  be  decided  by  these  cravings 
of  the  animal  within  him. 

From  the  grosser  sorts  of  temptation  he  was  always 
saved  by  the  fastidiousness  of  his  temperament ;  the 
thought  of  a  woman  who  sold  herself  for  money  could 
never  bring  him  anything  but  shuddering.  But  all 
about  his  lodging-house  lived  the  daughters  of  the  poor, 
and  these  were  a  snare  for  his  feet.  It  seemed  to  him 
as  if  this  craving  came  to  a  man  in  regular  pulses ; 
he  could  go  for  weeks,  serene  and  happy  in  his  work — 
and  then  suddenly  would  come  the  restlessness,  and  he 
would  go  out  into  the  night  and  wander  about  the 
streets  for  hours,  impelled  by  a  futile  yearning  for  he 
knew  not  what — the  hope  of  something  clean  in  the 
midst  of  uncleanliness,  of  some  adventure  that  would  be 


THE   VICTIM  29 

not  quite  shameful  to  a  poet's  fancy.  And  then,  after 
midnight,  he  would  steal  home,  baffled  and  sick  at  heart, 
and  wet  his  pillow  with  hot  and  bitter  tears ! 

So  unbearable  to  him  was  the  thought  of  such  perils 
that  he  was  impelled  to  seek  his  old  friend  the  clergy 
man,  who  had  lost  him  over  the  ancient  Hebrew  my 
thologies,  and  now  won  him  back  by  his  living  moral 
force.  With  much  embarrassment  and  stammering 
Thyrsis  managed  to  give  a  Hint  of  what  troubled  him; 
and  the  man,  whose  life  was  made  wholly  of  love  for 
others,  opened  his  great  heart  and  took  Thyrsis  in. 

He  told  him  of  his  own  youthful  struggle — a  struggle 
which  had  resulted  in  victory,  for  he  had  never  known  a 
woman.  And  he  put  all  the  facts  before  the  boy,  made 
clear  to  him  the  all-determining  importance  of  the  issue : 

"Choose  well,  your  choice  is 
Brief  and  yet  endless !" 

On  the  one  hand  was  slavery  and  degradation  and 
disease;  and  on  the  other  were  all  the  heights  of  the 
human  spirit.  For  if  one  saved  and  stored  this  mighty 
sex-energy,  it  became  transmuted  to  the  gold  of  intel 
lectual  and  emotional  power.  Such  was  the  universal 
testimony  of  the  masters  of  the  higher  life — 

"My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten 
Because  my  heart  is  pure." 

And  this  was  no  blind  asceticism ;  it  was  simply  a  choos 
ing  of  the  best.  It  was  not  a  denial  of  love,  but  on 
the  contrary  a  consecration  of  love.  Some  day  Thyrsis 
would  meet  the  woman  he  was  to  cleave  to,  and  he  would 
expect  her  to  come  to  him  a  virgin ;  and  he  must  honor 


60  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

her  as  much — he  must  save  the  fire  and  fervor  of  his 
young  desire  for  his  life's  great  consummation. 

Such  was  the  ideal;  and  these  two  men  made  a  com 
pact  between  them,  that  once  every  month  Thyrsis 
would  write  and  tell  of  his  success  or  failure.  And  this 
amateur  confessional  was  a  mighty  motive  to  the  lad — 
he  knew  that  he  could  never  tell  a  lie,  and  the  thought 
of  telling  the  truth  was  like  a  sword  hanging  over  him. 
There  were  hours  of  trial,  when  he  stood  so  close  to  the 
edge  of  the  precipice  that  this  alone  was  what  kept 
him  clear. 

§  10.  THE  summer  had  come,  and  Thyrsis  had  gone 
away  to  live  in  a  country  village,  and  was  reading 
Keats  and  Shelley,  and  the  narrative  poems  of  Scott. 
There  came  a  soft  warm  evening,  when  all  the  world 
seemed  a-dream ;  and  he  had  been  wrorking  hard,  and 
there  came  to  him  a  yearning  for  the  stars.  He  went 
out,  and  was  strolling  through  the  streets  of  the  village, 
when  he  saw  a  girl  come  out  of  one  of  the  houses.  She 
was  younger  than  he,  graceful  of  form,  and  pretty. 
The  lamp-light  flashed  on  her  bright  cheeks,  and  she 
smiled  at  him  as  she  passed.  And  Thyrsis'  heart  gave 
a  great  leap,  and  the  blood  surged  to  his  face;  he 
turned  and  looked,  and  saw  that  she  was  gazing  over 
her  shoulder  at  him. 

He  stopped,  and  turned  to  follow,  his  meditations 
all  gone,  and  gone  his  resolutions.  A  trembling  seized 
him,  and  every  nerve  of  him  tingled.  He  could  feel 
his  heart  as  if  it  were  underneath  his  throat. 

In  a  moment  more  he  was  beside  the  girl.  "May  1 
join  you?"  he  asked,  and  she  replied  with  a  nod. 

Thyrsis  moved  beside  her  and  took  her  arm  in  his, 
A  moment  later  they  came  to  a  place  where  the  road 


THE   VICTIM  31 

was  dark,  and  he  put  his  arm  about  her  waist;  she 
made  no  resistance. 

"I — I've  seen  you  often  before,"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  he  replied,  "I  have  seen  you."  And  he  sud 
denly  remembered  a  remark  that  he  had  heard  about 
her.  There  was  a  large  summer-hotel  in  this  neighbor 
hood,  which  as  usual  had  brought  all  the  corruptions 
of  the  city  in  its  train ;  and  a  youth  whom  Thyrsis  had 
met  there  had  pointed  out  the  girl  with  the  remark, 
"She's  a  little  beast." 

And  this  idea,  as  it  came  to  him,  swept  him*  away 
in  a  fierce  tide  of  madness ;  he  bent  suddenly  down  and 
whispered  into  her  ear.  They  were  words  that  never 
in  Thyrsis'  life  had  passed  his  lips  before. 

The  girl  pushed  him  away ;  but  she  laughed. 

"You  don't  mind,  do  you?"  exclaimed  Thyrsis,  his 
heart  thumping  like  a  hammer. 

"Listen,"  he  whispered,  bending  towards  her.  "Let 
us  go  and  take  a  walk.  Let  us  go  where  no  one  will 
see  us." 

"Where?"  she  asked. 

"Out  into  the  country,"  he  said. 

"Not  now,"  she  replied.     "Some  other  time." 

"No,  now !"  exclaimed  Thyrsis,  desperately.    "Now !" 

They  had  been  moving  slowly;  they  came  to  a  place 
where  a  great  tree  hung  over  the  road,  shadowing  it ;. 
and  there  they  stopped,  as  by  one  impulse. 

"Listen  to  me,"  he  whispered,  swiftly.  "Listen. 
You  don't  know  how  anxious  I  have  been  to  meet  you. 
It's  true — indeed  it's  true !" 

He  paused.  "Yes,"  said  the  girl,  "and  I  have  been 
wanting  to  meet  you.  Didn't  you  ever  see  me  nod  to 
you?" 

And  suddenly  Thyrsis  put  his  arms  about  her,  and 


32  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

pressed  her  to  him.     The  touch  of  her  bosom  sent 
blood  driving  through  his  veins  in  torrents  of  fire, 
no  longer  knew  or  cared  what  he  said,  or  what  he  <    *. 

"Listen  to  me,"  he  raced  on.  "Listen  to  me!  N~- 
body  will  know  !  And  you  are  so  beautiful,  so  beautiful ! 
I  love  you !"  The  words  burned  his  lips,  but  he  forced 
himself  to  say  them,  again  and  again — "I  love  you!" 

The  girl  was  gazing  around  her  nervously.     "No. 
new,"    she   exclaimed.      "Not   to-night.      To-morrow 
will  meet  you,  to-morrow  night,  and  go  with  you." 

"tfo,"    cried    Thyrsis,    "not    to-morrow   night,    br' 
now !"     And  he  clasped  her  yet  more  tightly,  with  a'l 
his  strength.     "Listen,"  he  panted,  his  breath  on  h. 
cheek.     "I  love  you!     I  cannot  wait  till  to-morrow- 
I  could  not  bear  it.     I  am  all  on  fire !     I  should  not 
know  what  to  do!" 

The  girl  gazed  about  her  again  in  uncertainty,  ar.J 
Thyrsis  swept  on  in  his  swift,  half-incoherent  exclama 
tions.  He  would  take  no  refusal ;  for  half  his  madness 
was  terror  of  himself,  and  he  knew  it.  And  then  sud 
denly,  as  he  cried  out  to  her,  the  girl  whispered,  faintly, 
"All  right !"  And  his  heart  gave  a  throb  that  hurt 
him. 

"I'll  tell  you,"  she  went  on,  hastily,  "I  was  going  tu 
the  store  for  something,  and  they  expect  me  home. 
But  wait  here  till  I  get  back,  and  then  I'll  go  with 
you." 

"You  mean  it?"  whispered  Thyrsis.     "You  mean  it?" 

"Yes,  yes,"  she  answered.  t 

"And  it  will  be  soon?" 

"Yes,  soon." 

"All  right,"  said  he.  "But  first  give  me  a  kiss." 
As  she  held  up  her  face,  Thyrsis  pressed  her  to  him, 
and  kissed  her  again  and  again,  until  her  cheeks  were 


THE   VICTIM  33 

Aame.     At  last  he  released  her,  and  she  turned  swiftly 
J*:hd  darted  up  the  street. 

u> 

i    §11.     AND  after  she  was  gone  the  boy  stood  there 

motionless,  not   stirring  even   a  hand.     A  full  minute 

"passed,  and  the  color  went  out  of  his  cheeks,  and  the 
rrfire  out  of  his  veins,  and  he  could  hardly  stand  erect.. 
[  His  head  sunk  lower  and  lower,  until  suddenly  he  whis 
pered  hoarsely,  under  his  breath,  "Oh,  my  God!  Oh, 
.•*nny  God !" 

\     He  looked  up   at  the  sky,  his   face  ghastly  white; 

«and  there  came  from  his  throat  a  low  moan,  like  that 
—of  a  wounded  animal.      Suddenly  he  turned,   and  fled 

away  down  the  street. 

He  went  on  and  on,  block  after  block;  but  then,  all 
>at  once,  he  stopped  again  and  faced  about.    He  gripped 

•his  hands  until  the  nails  cut  him,  and  shut  his  teeth 
i  together  like  a  steel-trap.    "No,  no  !"  he  muttered.    "No 

—you  coward!" 

<       He  turned  and  began  to  march,  grimly,  as  a  soldier 
i  might ;  he  went  back,  and  stopped  on  the  spot  from 

which  he  had  come;  and  there  he  stood,  like  a  statue. 
*  "So   one   minute   passed,   then    another ;   and   at   last   a 

shadow  moved  in  the  distance,  and  a  step  came  near.     It 

was  the  girl. 

"Here  I  am,"  she  whispered,  laughing. 

•     "Yes,"  said  Thyrsis.     "I  have  something  I  must  say 

to  you,  please." 

She  noticed  the  change  in  a  flash,  and  she  stopped. 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"I  don't  know  just  how  to  tell  you,"  said  Thyrsis, 

in  a  low,  quivering  voice.     "I've  been  a  hound,  and  now 

I  don't  want  to  be  a  cad.     But  I'm  sorry  for  what 

we  were  talking  about." 


34  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"You  mean  what  you  were  talking  about,  don't  you  ?" 
demanded  the  girl,  her  eyes  flashing. 

Thyrsis  dropped  his  glance.  "Yes,"  he  said.  "I  am 
a  cur.  I  beg  your  pardon.  I  am  so  ashamed  of  myself 
that  I  don't  know  what  to  do.  But,  oh9  I  was  crazy. 
I  couldn't  help  it !  and  I — I'm  so  sorry !"  There  were 
tears  in  his  voice. 

"Humph,"  said  the  girl,  "it's  all  right." 

"No,"  said  Thyrsis,  "it's  all  wrong.  It's  dreadful 
— it's  horrible.  I  don't  know  what  I  should  have 
done " 

"Well,  you  better  not  do  it  any  more,  that's  all," 
said  she.  "I'm  sure  you  needn't  worry  about  me — I'll 
take  care  of  myself." 

Thyrsis  looked  at  her  again;  she  was  no  longer 
beautiful.  Her  face  was  coarse,  and  her  anger  did  not 
make  it  any  better.  His  humility  made  no  impression. 

"It  is  so  wrong—"  he  began ;  but  she  interrupted 
him. 

"Preaching  won't  help  it  any,"  she  said.  "I  don't 
want  to  hear  it.  Good-bye." 

So  she  turned  and  walked  away ;  and  Thyrsis  stood 
there,  white,  and  shuddering,  until  at  last  he  started 
and  strode  off.  Clear  through  the  town  he  went,  and 
out  into  the  black  country  beyond,  seeing  nothing, 
caring  about  nothing.  He  flung  himself  down  by  the 
roadside,  and  lay  there  moaning  for  hours :  "My  God, 
my  God,  what  shall  I  do?" 

§  IS.  IT  was  nearly  morning  when  he  came  back  and 
crept  upstairs  to  his  room ;  and  here  he  sat  by  the  bed 
side,  gazing  at  the  haggard  face  in  the  glass.  At  such 
times  as  this  he  discovered  a  something  in  his  features 
that  filled  him  with  shuddering;  he  discovered  it  in  his 


THE   VICTIM  35 

words,  and  in  the  very  tone  of  his  voice — the  sins  of  the 
fathers  were  being  visited  upon  the  children !  What  an 
old,  old  story  it  was  to  him — this  anguish  and  remorse! 
These  ecstasies  of  resolution  that  vanished  like  a  cloud- 
wrack — these  protestations  and  noble  sentiments  that 
counted  for  naught  in  conduct !  And  his  was  to  be 
the  whole  heritage  of  impotence  and  futility ;  he,  too, 
was  to  struggle  and  agonize — and  to  finish  with  his  foot 
in  the  trap! 

This  idea  was  like  a  white-hot  goad  to  him.  After 
such  an  experience  there  would  be  several  months  of 
toil  and  penance,  and  of  savage  self-immolation.  It 
was  hard  to  punish  a  man  who  had  so  little ;  but  Thyrsis 
managed  to  find  ways.  For  several  months  at  a  time 
he  would  go  without  those  kinds  of  food  that  he  liked ; 
and  instead  of  going  to  bed  at  one  o'clock  he  would 
read  the  New  Testament  in  Greek  for  an  hour.  He 
would  leap  out  of  bed  in  the  morning  and  plunge  into 
cold  water ;  and  at  night,  when  he  felt  a  longing  upon 
him,  he  would  go  out  and  run  for  hours. 

He  took  to  keeping  diaries  and  writing  exhortations 
to  himself.  Because  he  could  no  longer  use  the  theo 
logical  prayers  he  had  been  taught,  he  fashioned  new 
invocations  for  himself :  prayers  to  the  unknown  sources 
of  his  vision,  to  the  new  powers  of  his  own  soul — "the 
undiscovered  gods,"  as  he  called  them.  Above  all  he 
prayed  to  his  vision  of  the  maiden  who  waited  the  issue 
of  this  battle,  and  held  the  crown  of  victory  in  her 
keeping — 

"Somewhere  beneath,  the  sun, 

Those  quivering  heart-strings   prove  it, 
Somewhere  there  must  be  one 
Made  for  this  soul  to  love  it — 


36  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Some  one  whom  I  could  court 

With  no  great  change  of  manner, 

Still  holding  reason's  fort, 

While  waving  fancy's  banner !" 

All  of  which  things  made  a  subtle  change  in  his  atti 
tude  to  Corydon,  whom  he  still  met  occasionally.  Cory- 
don  was  now  a  young  lady,  beautiful,  even  stately, 
with  an  indescribable  atmosphere  of  gentleness  and 
purity  about  her.  All  things  unclean  shrunk  from  her 
presence ;  and  so  in  times  of  distress  he  liked  to  be  with 
her.  He  would  drop  vague  hints  as  to  sufferings  and 
temptations,  and  told  her  that  she  seemed  like  a  "god 
dess"  to  him. 

Corydon  received  this  with  some  awe,  but  with  more 
perplexity.  She  could  not  understand  why  anyone 
should  struggle  so  much,  or  why  a  youth  should  take 
such  a  sombre  view  of  things.  But  she  was  perfectly 
willing  to  seem  like  a  "goddess"  to  anyone,  and  she  was 
glad  if  that  helped  him.  She  was  touched  when  he 
read  her  a  poem  of  his  own,  a  poem  which  he  held  very 
precious.  He  called  it 

"A   song  of  the  young-eyed   Cherubim 
In   the   days   of  the  making   of  man." 

And  in  it  he  had  set  forth  the  view  of  life  that  had 
come  to  him — 

"The  quest  of  the  spirit's  gain — 
Lured  by  the  graces  of  pleasure, 

And  lashed  by  the  furies  of  pain. 

Thy  weakness  shall  sigh  for  an  Eden, 

But  the  sword  shall  flame  at  the  gate; 
For  far  is  the  home  of  thy  vision 

And  strong  is  the  hand  of  thy  fate!" 


THE   VICTIM  37 

§  13.  THOUGH  Thyrsis  had  no  time  to  realize  it,  it 
was  in  this  long  and  bitter  struggle  that  he  won  what 
ever  power  he  had  in  his  future  life.  It  was  here  that 
he  learned  "to  hold  his  will  above  him  as  his  law",  and 
to  defy  the  world  for  the  sake  of  his  ideal.  And  then, 
too,  this  toil  was  the  key  that  opened  to  him  the 
treasure-house  of  a  new  art — which  was  music. 

Until  he  was  nearly  out  of  college  Thyrsis  had 
scarcely  heard  any  music  at  all.  Church-hymns  he 
had  learned,  and  a  few  songs  in  school.  But  now  in 
poetry  and  other  books  he  met  with  references  to  com 
posers,  and  to  the  meaning  of  great  music ;  and  the 
things  that  were  described  there  were  the  things  he 
loved,  and  he  began  to  feel  a  great  eagerness  to  get 
at  them.  As  a  first  step  he  bought  a  mandolin,  and 
set  to  work  to  teach  himself  to  play,  a  task  at  which 
he  wrought  with  great  diligence.  At  the  same  time 
a  friend  had  bought  a  guitar,  and  the  two  set  to  work 
to  play  duets.  The  first  preliminary  was  the  getting 
of  the  instruments  in  tune;  and  not  knowing  that  the 
mandolin  is  an  octave  higher  than  the  guitar,  they  spent 
a  great  deal  of  time  and  broke  a  great  many  guitar- 
strings. 

As  the  next  step,  Thyrsis  went  to  hear  a  great 
pianist,  and  sat  perplexed  and  wondering.  There  was 
a  girl  next  to  him  who  sobbed,  and  Thyrsis  watched  her 
as  he  might  have  watched  a  house  on  fire.  Only  once 
the  pianist  pleased  him — when  he  played  a  pretty  little 
piece  called  somebody's  "impromptu",  in  which  he  got 
a  gleam  of  a  "tune."  Poor  Thyrsis  went  and  got  that 
piece,  and  took  it  home  to  study  it,  with  the  help  of 
the  mandolin;  but,  alas,  in  the  maze  of  notes  he  could 
not  even  find  the  "tune." 

But  if  he  could  not  understand  the  music,  he  could 


38  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

read  books  about  it ;  he  read  a  whole  library — criticism 
of  music,  analysis  of  music,  histories  of  music,  com 
posers  of  music ;  and  so  gradually  he  learned  the  differ 
ence  between  a  sarabande  and  a  symphony,  and  began 
to  get  some  idea  of  what  he  went  out  for  to  hear.  At 
first,  at  the  concerts,  all  he  could  think  of  was  to  crane 
his  neck  and  recognize  the  different  instruments ;  he 
heard  whole  symphonies,  while  doing  nothing  but  watch 
ing  for  the  "movements,"  and  making  sure  he  hadn't 
skipped  any.  One  heartless  composer  ran  two  move 
ments  into  one,  and  so  Thyrsis'  concert  came  out  one 
piece  short  at  the  end,  and  he  sat  gazing  about  him  in 
consternation  when  the  audience  rose  to  go.  After 
wards  he  read  long  dissertations  about  each  symphony 
before  he  went,  and  he  would  note  down  the  important 
points  and  watch  for  them.  The  critic  would  expatiate 
upon  "the  long-drawn  dissonance  forte,  that  marks  the 
close  of  the  working-out  portion" ;  and  Thyrsis  would 
watch  for  that  long-drawn  dissonance,  and  be  wonder 
ing  if  it  was  never  coming — when  suddenly  the  whole 
symphony  would  come  to  an  end!  Or  he  would  read 
about  a  "quaint  capering  measure  led  off  by  the  bas 
soons,"  or  a  "frantic  sweep  of  the  violins  over  a  trom 
bone  melody,"  and  he  would  watch  for  these  events  with 
eyes  and  ears  alert,  and  if  he  found  them — eureka! 

But  such  things  could  not  last  forever ;  for  Thyrsis 
had  a  heart  full  of  eagerness  and  love,  and  of  such 
is  the  soul  of  music.  And  just  then  was  a  time  when 
he  was  sick  and  worn — when  it  seemed  to  him  that  the 
burden  of  his  life  was  more  than  he  could  bear.  He 
was  haunted  by  the  thought  that  he  would  lose  his 
long  battle,  that  he  would  go  under  and  go  down ;  and 
then  it  was  that  chance  took  him  to  a  concert  which 
closed  with  the  great  "C-Minor  Symphony." 


THE   VICTIM  39 

Thyrsis  had  read  a  life  of  Beethoven,  and  he  knew 
that  here  was  one  of  the  hero-souls — a  man  who  had 
grappled  with  the  fiends,  and  passed  through  the  valley 
of  death.  And  now  he  read  accounts  of  this  titan 
symphony,  and  learned  that  it  was  a  battle  of  the 
human  spirit  with  despair.  He  read  Beethoven's  words 
about  the  opening  theme — "So  knocks  fate  upon  the 
door !"  And  a  fierce  and  overwhelming  longing  pos 
sessed  him  to  get  at  the  soul  of  that  symphony. 

He  went  to  the  concert,  and  heard  nothing  of  the 
rest  of  the  music,  but  sat  like  a  man  in  a  dream ;  and 
when  the  time  came  for  the  symphony,  he  was  trembling 
with  excitement.  There  was  a  long  silence;  and  then 
suddenly  came  the  first  theme — those  fearful  hammer- 
strokes  that  cannot  be  thought  without  a  shudder. 
They  beat  upon  Thyrsis'  very  heart-strings,  and  he  sat 
appalled;  and  straight  out  he  went  upon  the  tide  of 
that  mighty  music-passion — without  knowing  it,  with 
out  knowing  how.  He  forgot  that  he  was  trying  to 
understand  a  symphony;  he  forgot  where  he  was,  and 
what  he  was ;  he  only  knew  that  gigantic  phantoms 
surged  within  him,  that  his  soul  was  a  hundred  times 
itself.  He  never  guessed  that  an  orchestra  was  play 
ing  a  second  theme;  he  only  knew  that  he  saw  a  light 
gleam  out  of  the  storm,  that  he  heard  a  voice,  pitiful, 
fearful,  beautiful  beyond  utterance,  crying  out  to  the 
furies  for  mercy;  and  that  then  the  storm  closed  over 
it  with  a  roar.  Again  and  again  it  rose;  Thyrsis  did 
not  know  that  this  was  the  "working-out  portion"  that 
had  forever  been  his  bane.  He  only  knew  that  it  strug 
gled  and  fought  his  fight,  that  it  pleaded  and  sobbed, 
and  rose  higher  and  higher,  and  began  to  rejoice — - 
and  that  then  came  the  great  black  phantom-shape 
sweeping  over  it ;  and  the  iron  hammer-strokes  of  Fate 


40  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

beat  down  upon  it,  crushed  it  and  trampled  it  into 
annihilation.  Again  and  again  this  happened,  while 
Thyrsis  sat  clutching  the  seat,  and  shaking  with  wonder 
and  excitement.  Never  in  his  experience  had  there  been 
anything  so  vast,  so  awful;  *t  was  more  than  he  could 
bear,  and  when  the  first  movement  came  to  an  end- 
when  the  soul's  last  hope  was  dead — he  got  up  and 
rushed  out.  People  wrho  passed  him  on  the  streets 
must  have  thought  that  he  was  crazy ;  and  afterwards, 
that  day  and  forever,  he  lived  all  his  soul's  life  in 
music. 

As  a  result  of  this  Thyrsis  paid  all  his  bank-account 
for  a  violin,  and  went  to  see  a  teacher. 

"You  are  too  old,"  the  teacher  said. 

But  Thyrsis  answered,  "I  will  work  as  no  one  ever 
worked  before." 

"We  all  do  that,"  replied  the  other,  with  a  smile. 
And  so  they  began. 

And  so  all  day  long,  with  fingers  raw,  and  arms  and 
back  shuddering  with  exhaustion,  Thyrsis  sat  and 
practiced,  the  spirit  of  Music  beckoning  him  on.  It 
was  in  a  boarding-house,  and  there  was  a  nervous  old 
man  in  the  next  room,  and  in  the  end  Thyrsis  had  to 
move.  By  the  time  he  went  away  to  the  country,  he 
was  able  to  play  a  melody  in  tune ;  and  then  he  would 
take  some  one  that  had  fascinated  him,  and  practice 
it  and  practice  it  night  and  day.  He  would  take  his 
fiddle  every  morning  at  eight  and  stride  out  into  the 
forest,  and  there  he  would  stay  all  day  with  the  squir 
rels.  They  told  him  once  how  a  new  arrival,  driving 
over  in  the  hotel  'bus  at  early  dawn,  had  passed  an  old 
Italian  woman  toiling  up  a  hill  and  singing  for  dear 
life  the  "Tannhauser  March."  It  chanced  that  the  new 
arrival  was  a  musician,  and  he  leaned  out  and  asked 


THE   VICTIM  41 

the  old  woman  where  she  had  learned  it.     And  "this  was 
her  explanation; 

"Dey  ees  a  crazy  feller  in  de  woods — he  play  it  all 
day  for  tree  weeks !" 

§  14.  BY  this  time  Thyrsis  had  finished  at  college, 
passing  comfortably  near  the  bottom  of  his  class,  and 
had  betaken  himself  to  a  university  as  a  graduate 
student.  He  was  duly  registered  for  a  lot  of  courses, 
and  spent  his  time  when  he  should  have  been  at  the 
lectures,  sitting  in  a  vacant  class-room  reading  the 
book  that  had  fascinated  him  last.  His  note-book  be 
gan  at  that  time  to  show  two  volumes  a  day  on  an 
average,  and  once  or  twice  he  stopped  at  night  to 
wonder  how  it  had  actually  been  possible  for  him  to 
read  poetry  fourteen  hours  a  day  for  a  whole  week  and 
not  be  tired. 

He  taught  himself  German,  and  that  led  to  another 
great  discovery — he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Goethe. 
The  power  of  that  mighty  spirit  took  hold  of  him,  so 
that  he  prayed  to  him  when  he  was  lonely,  and  kept  the 
photograph  of  the  young  poet  in  his  pocket,  to  gaze 
at  it  as  at  a  lover.  The  great  eyes  came  to  haunt  him 
so  that  one  night  he  awoke  crying  out,  because  he  had 
dreamed  he  was  going  to  meet  Goethe. 

In  the*  catalog  of  the  university  there  were  listed  a 
number  of  courses  in  "rhetoric  and  English  composi 
tion".  They  were  for  the  purpose  of  teaching  one 
how  to  write,  and  the  catalog  set  forth  convincingly 
the  methods  whereby  this  was  done.  Thyrsis  wished 
to  know  all  there  was  to  know  about  writing,  and  so 
he  enrolled  himself  for  an  advanced  course,  and  went 
for  an  hour  every  day  and  listened  to  expositions  of 
the  elements  of  sentence-structure  by  Prof.  Osborne, 


42  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

author  of  "American  Prose  Writers"  and  "The  Science 
of  Rhetoric".  The  professor  would  give  him  a  theme,, 
and  bid  him  bring  in  a  five-hundred  word  composition. 
Perhaps  it  was  that  Thyrsis  was  lacking  in  the  play- 
spirit  ;  at  any  rate  he  could  not  write  convincingly  on 
the  subject  of  "The  Duty  of  the  College  Man  to  Sup 
port  Athletics."  He  struggled  for  a  month  against 
his  own  impotence,  and  then  went  to  see  his  instructor. 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "I  shall  have  to  drop  Course  A." 

The  professor  gazed  over  his  spectacles  at  him. 

"Why?" 

"I  don't  think  I  am  getting  any  good  out  of  it." 

"But  how  can  you  tell  what  good  you  are  getting?"" 

"I  don't  seem  to  feel  that  I  am,"  said  Thyrsis, 
deprecatingly. 

"It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  you  would  feel  it," 
said  the  other — "not  at  this  early  stage.  You  must 
wait." 

"But  I  don't  like  the  method,  sir." 

"What's  wrong  with  the  method?" 

Thyrsis  was  embarrassed.  He  was  not  sure,  he  said ; 
but  he  did  not  think  that  writing  could  be  taught. 
Anyway,  one  had  first  to  have  something  worth  say 
ing— 

"Are  you  laboring  under  the  delusion  that  you  know 
anything  about  writing?"  demanded  the  professor.  (He 
had  written  across  Thyrsis'  la'st  composition  the  words, 
"Feeble  and  trivial".)* 

"Why,  no,"  began  the  boy. 

"Because  if  you  are,  let  me  disabuse  your  mind  at 
once.  There  is  no  one  in  the  class  who  knows  less 
about  writing  than  yourself." 

"I  think,"  said  Thyrsis,  "it's  because  I  can't  bring 


THE  VICTIM  43 

myself  to  write  in  cold  blood.  I  have  to  be  interested. 
I'm  sure  that  is  the  trouble." 

"I'm  sure,"  said  the  other,  "that  the  trouble  is  that 
you  think  you  know  too  much." 

"I'm  sorry,  sir,"  said  Thyrsis,  humbly.  "I've  tried 
my  best " 

"It  is  my  business  to  teach  students  to  write.  I've 
given  my  life  to  that,  and  I  think  I  know  something 
about  it.  But  you  think  you  know  more  than  I  do. 
That's  all." 

And  so  they  parted.  Thyrsis  kept  a  vivid  recollec 
tion  of  this  interview,  for  the  reason  that  at  a  later 
stage  of  his  career  he  came  into  contact  with  Prof. 
Osborne  again,  and  got  another  glimpse  of  the  authori 
tarian  attitude  towards  the  art  of  letters. 

§  15.  THYRSIS  had  not  many  friends  at  college,  and 
none  at  all  at  the  university.  He  had  no  time  to  make 
any ;  and  besides,  there  was  a  certain  facetious  senior 
who  had  caught  him  hurrying  through  the  corridors 
one  day,  declaring  in  excitement  that — 

"Banners  yellow,   glorious,   golden, 
On  its  roof  did  float  and  flow!" 

But  he  had  long  ago  ceased  to  hope  for  a  friend, 
or  to  care  what  anybody  thought  about  him ;  it  was 
clear  to  him  by  this  time  that  he  had  made  himself 
into  a  poet,  and  was  doomed  to  be  unhappy.  His 
mother  had  given  up  all  hope  of  seeing  him  a  bishop, 
and  they  had  compromised  upon  a  judgeship;  but  here 
at  the  university  there  was  a  law-school,  and  he  met 
the  students,  and  saw  that  this,  too,  could  not  be. 
These  "lawyers"  were  not  seeking  knowledge  for  the 
love  of  it — they  were  studying  a  trade,  by  which  they 


44  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

could  rise  in  the  world.  They  were  not  going  out  to 
do  battle  for  truth  and  justice — they  were  perfecting 
themselves  in  cunning,  so  that  they  might  be  of  help 
in  money-disputes ;  they  were  sharpening  their  wits, 
to  make  them  useful  tools  for  the  opening  of  treasure- 
chests.  And  this  attitude  to  life  was  written  all  over 
their  personalities ;  they  seemed  to  Thyrsis  a  coarse 
and  roistering  crew,  and  he  shrunk  from  them  in  re 
pugnance. 

He  went  his  own  impetuous  way.  He  stayed  at  the 
university  until  he  had  taught  himself  French  and 
Italian,  as  well  as  German,  and  had  read  all  the  best 
literature  in  those  languages.  And  likewise  he  heard 
all  the  best  music,  and  went  about  full  of  it  day  and 
night.  By  this  time  he  had  definitely  beaten  his  devils, 
and  had  come  to  be  master  of  himself ;  and  though  no 
body  guessed  anything  about  it,  there  was  a  new  marvel 
going  on  within  him — he  had,  in  a  spiritual  sense,  be 
come  pregnant. 

There  were  many  signs  by  which  this  state  might  have 
been  known.  He  went  quite  alone,  and  spoke  to  no 
man;  he  was  self-absorbed,  and  walked  about  with  his 
eyes  fixed  on  vacancy;  he  was  savage  when  disturbed, 
and  guarded  his  time  unscrupulously.  He  had  given 
up  the  very  last  of  the  formalities  of  life — he  no  longer 
attended  any  lectures,  or  wore  cuffs,  and  he  would  not 
talk  at  meal-times.  He  took  long  walks  at  impossible 
hours,  and  he  was  fond  of  a  certain  high  hill  where  the 
storms  blew.  These  things  had  been  going  on  for  a 
year ;  and  now  the  book  that  had  been  coming  to  ripe 
ness  in  his  mind  was  ready  to  be  born. 

It  had  its  origin  in  the  reading  of  history,  and  the 
fronting  of  old  tyranny  in  its  cruel  forms.  Thyrsis 
had  come  to  hate  Christianity  for  many  things  by  that 


THE   VICTIM  45 

time,  but  most  of  all  he  hated  it  because  it  taught  the 
bastard  virtue  of  Obedience.  Thyrsis  obeyed  no  man — 
he  lived  his  life ;  and  the  fiery  ardor  with  which  he  lived 
it  was  taking  form  in  his  mind  as  a  personality.  He 
was  dreaming  a  hero  who  should  be  Resistance  incar 
nate  ;  the  passionate  assertion  of  man's  right  and  of 
man's  defiance. 

It  was  in  the  days  of  ferocity  in  Italy,  the  days  of 
the  despot  and  the  bravo ;  and  Thyrsis'  hero  was  a 
minstrel,  a  mighty  musician  whose  soul  was  free.  And 
he  sung  in  the  despot's  hall,  and  wooed  the  despot's 
daughter.  This  was  the  minstrel  of  "Zulieka"- 

"His  ladder  of  song  was  slight, 
But  it  reached  to  her  window's  height ; 
Each  verse  so  frail  was  the  silken  rail, 
From  which  her  soul  took  flight." 

Thyrsis  went  about  quite  drunk  with  the  burning 
words  with  which  the  minstrel  won  the  lady,  and  tore 
her  free  from  the  mockeries  of  convention,  and  that 
divinity  that  doth  hedge  about  a  princess.  He  bore  her 
away,  locked  tightly  in  his  arms,  and  all  his  own — into 
the  great  lonely  mountains ;  and  there  lived  the  minstrel 
and  the  princess,  the  lord  and  the  lady  of  an  outlaw 
band.  But  the  outlaws  were  cruel,  and  the  minstrel 
sought  goodness ;  and  so  there  was  a  struggle,  and  he 
and  the  lady  went  yet  deeper  into  the  black  forest, 
where  they  dwelt  alone  in  a  hut,  he  a  prince  of  hunters 
and  she  a  princess  of  love.  But  the  outlaws  led  the 
despot  to  the  place,  and  there  was  a  battle ;  the  princess 
was  slain,  and  the  minstrel  escaped  in  the  darkness.  All 
night  he  roamed  the  forest,  and  in  the  morning  he  lay 
by  the  roadside  with  a  bow  in  his  hand,  and  when  the 
despot  rode  by  he  rose  and  drove  the  shaft  through  his 


46  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

heart.  Then  they  captured  him,  and  tortured  him,  and 
he  died  with  a  song  of  mockery  and  defiance  upon  his 
lips. 

§  16.  Now,  when  these  things  first  came  to  Thyrsis, 
he  whispered  in  awe  that  it  would  be  a  life-time  before 
he  could  write  them.  And  a  year  passed  thus,  while 
every  emotion  of  his  life  poured  itself  into  some  part 
of  that  story,  and  every  note  of  music  that  he  heard 
came  out  of  the  minstrel's  heart.  At  last  the  time 
came  when  he  was  so  full  of  it  that  he  could  no  longer 
find  peace;  when  the  wonder  of  it  was  such  that  he 
walked  along  the  street  laughing,  and  with  tears  in  his 
eyes.  Then  he  said  to  himself,  "It  must  be  done! 
Now!  Now!"  And  he  looked  about  him  as  a  woman 
might,  seeking  some  place  for  her  labor. 

That  was  in  the  late  winter,  when  the  professors 
at  the  university,  and  all  his  relatives  and  acquain 
tances,  had  given  him  up  as  a  hopeless  case.  He  had 
stopped  all  his  writing  for  money — he  had  a  hundred 
dollars  laid  by,  and  that  would  suffice  him ;  and  he  was 
wandering  about  whispering  to  himself:  "The  spring 
time!  The  spring-time!  For  it  must  be  in  the 
country!"  When  April  had  come  he  could  stand  it  no 
longer — he  must  go!  So  he  left  all  behind  him,  and 
set  out  for  a  place  in  the  wilderness. 

When  he  reached  it,  he  found  a  lake  that  was  all  ice, 
and  mountains  that  were  all  snow;  the  country  people, 
who  had  never  seen  a  poet,  and  knew  not  the  subtle 
difference  between  inspiration  and  insanity,  heard  with 
wonder  that  he  was  going  out  into  tfye  woods.  But 
he  set  out  alone,  through  the  snowy  forest  and  along 
the  lake-shore,  to  find  some  place  far  away,  where 
he  could  build  a  hut,  or  even  put  up  a  tent;  and  when 


THE   VICTIM  47 

he  was  miles  from  the  village,  he  came  suddenly  on  a 
little  wonderland  that  made  his  heart  leap  like  the  wild 
deer  in  the  brake.  Here  was  a  dreamland  palace,  a 
vision  beyond  all  thinking — a  little  shanty  built  of  logs ! 
It  stood  in  a  pretty  dell,  with  a  mountain  streamlet 
dashing  through  it,  and  the  mighty  forest  hiding  it, 
and  the  lake  spread  out  in  front  of  it.  It  was  all  wet 
snow,  and  freezing  rain,  and  mud  and  desolation ;  but 
Thyrsis  saw  the  summer  that  was  to  be,  and  he  sat 
down  upon  a  stone  and  gazed  at  it,  and  laughed  and 
sang  for  wonder  and  joy. 

Then  he  fled  back  to  the  village,  and  found  the  owner 
of  the  earthly  rights  to  this  paradise,  and  hired  it 
for  a  little  gold ;  and  then  he  moved  out,  in  spite  of 
the  snow.  At  last  his  soul  was  free ! 

Twice  a  week  they  brought  him  provisions,  and  there 
he  stayed.  At  first  he  nearly  froze  at  night,  and  he 
had  to  write  with  his  gloves  on ;  but  he  did  not  feel 
the  cold,  because  of  the  fire  within.  He  climbed  the 
mountains  and  yelled  with  the  mad  wind,  and  tramped 
through  the  bare,  rocking  forest,  singing  his  minstrel 
songs.  And  all  these  days  he  walked  with  God,  and 
there  was  no  world  at  all  save  the  world  of  nature. 
Millions  of  young-hearted  things  sprang  up  out  of  the 
ground  to  welcome  him ;  the  forests  shook  out  their 
dazzling  sheen,  and  the  wild  birds  went  mad  in  the 
mornings.  All  the  time  Thyrsis  was  writing,  writing — 
thrilling  with  his  ecstasy,  and  pouring  out  all  his  soul. 
He  kept  a  little  diary  these  days,  and  for  weeks  there 
was  but  one  entry— "The  book !  The  book !" 

And  then  one  day  came  a  letter  from  his  mother, 
saying  that  she  was  coming  to  the  village  nearby  to 
spend  the  summer;  also  that  Corydon's  mother  was 
coming,  and  that  Corydon  would  be  with  her ! 


BOOK  II 
THE   SNARE 


The  streamlet  tinkled  on.  She  sat,  gazing  about  her 
at  each  familiar  tree  and  rock.  And  meanwhile  he  was 
reading  again  from  the  book 

"Here,  too,  our  shepherd-pipes  we  first  assay'd!" 

"Is  that  from  'Thyrsis'?"  she  asked.  "Read  me 
those  lines  that  we  used  to  love  so  much." 

And  so  he  turned  the  page,  and  read  again 

"A  fugitive  and  gracious  light  Ine  seeks, 
Shy  to  illumine;  and  I  seek  it,  too. 

This  does  not  come  with  houses  or  with  gold, 
With  place,  with  honor,  and  a  flattering  crew: 

'Tis  not  in  the  world's  market  bought  and  sold — 

But    the   smooth-slipping   weeks 
Drop  by,  and  leave  its  seeker  still  untired; 
Out  of  the  heed  of  mortals  he  is  gone, 
He  wends  un  followed,  he  must  house  alone; 
Yet  on  he  fares,  by  his  own  heart  inspired" 


§  1.     ON  the  train  Corydon  was  writing  a  letter  to 
•  a  friend,  to  say  where  she  was  going,  and  that  Thyrsis 
was  there.  "I  don't  expect  to  see  anything  of  him,"  she 
wrote.    "He  grows  more  egotistical  and  more  contempt 
uous  every  day,  and  I  cordially  dislike  him." 

But  when  a  man  has  spent  three  or  four  weeks  with 
no  company  save  the  squirrels  and  the  owls,  there  comes 
over  him  a  mood  of  sociability,  when  the  sight  of  a 
friendly  face  is  an  event.  Thyrsis  had  now  written 
several  chapters  of  his  book,  and  the  first  fury  of  his 
creative  impulse  had  spent  itself.  So  when  Corydon 
stepped  from  the  train,  she  found  him  waiting  there  to 
greet  her;  and  he  told  her  that  he  was  laying  in  sup 
plies  for  a  feast,  and  that  on  the  morrow  she  and  her 
mother  were  to  come  out  and  see  his  fairy-palace  and 
have  a  picnic  dinner. 

They  came;  and  the  May  put  on  her  finest  raiment 
for  their  greeting.  The  sun  shone  warm  and  bright, 
and  there  was  a  humming  and  stirring  in  grass  and 
thicket;  one  could  feel  the  surge  of  the  spring-time 
growth  as  a  living  flood.  There  was  a  glory  of  young 
green  over  the  hill-sides,  and  a  quivering  sheen  of  white 
in  the  aspens  and  birches.  Corydon  clasped  her  hands 
and  cried  out  in  rapture  when  she  saw  it. 

And  Thyrsis,  picturesque  in  his  old  corduroy  trousers 
and  his  grey  flannel  shirt,  played  the  host.  He  showed 
them  his  domestic  establishment — wherein  things  were 
set  in  order  for  the  first  time  since  he  had  come.  He 
told  all  his  adventures:  how  the  cold  had  crept  in  at 
night,  and  he  had  to  fiddle  to  keep  his  courage  up ; 

51 


52  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

how  he  had  slept  in  a  canvas-cot  for  the  first  time,  and 
piled  all  the  bedding  on  top,  and  wondered  that  he  was 
cold ;  how  he  had  left  the  pail  with  the  freshly-roasted 
beef  on  the  piazza,  and  a  wild  cat  had  carried  off  pail 
and  all.  He  made  fun  of  his  amateur  house-keeping — 
he  would  forget  things  and  let  them  burn,  or  let  the 
fire  go  out;  and  he  had  tried  living  altogether  on  cold 
food,  to  the  great  perplexity  of  his  stomach. 

Then  he  gave  a  demonstration  of  his  hard-won  culi 
nary  skill.  He  boiled  rice  and  raisins,  and  fried  bacon 
and  eggs ;  and  they  had  fresh  bread  and  butter,  and 
jam  and  pickles,  and  a  festive  cake.  And  after  they 
had  feasted,  Thyrsis  stretched  himself  and  leaned  back 
against  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  and  gazed  up  at  the  sky, 
quoting  the  words  of  a  certain  one-eyed  Kalandar,  son 
of  a  king,  "Verily,  this  indeed  is  life!  'Tis  pity  'tis 
fleeting !" 

Afterwards  he  took  Corydon  for  a  walk.  They 
climbed  the  hill  where  he  came  to  battle  with  the  storm- 
winds,  and  to  watch  the  sunsets  and  the  moon  rising 
over  the  lake.  And  then  they  went  down  into  the 
glen,  where  the  mountain  streamlet  tumbled.  Here 
had  been  wood-sorrel,  and  a  carpet  of  the  white  trillium ; 
and  now  there  was  adder's  tongue,  quaint  and  saucy, 
and  columbine,  and  the  pale  dusty  corydalis.  There 
was  soft  new  moss  underfoot,  and  one  walked  as  if  in 
a  temple. 

Thyrsis  pointed  out  a  seat  beside  a  deep  bubbling 
pool.  "Here's  where  I  sit  and  write,"  he  said. 

"And  how  comes  the  book?"  asked  Corydon. 

"Oh,  I'm  hammering  at  it — that's  the  best  I  can  say." 

"What  is  it?" 

"Why — it's  a  story.  I  suppose  it'll  be  called  a 
romance,  though  I  don't  like  the  word." 


THE    SNARE  53 

Corydon  pondered  for  a  moment.  "I  wouldn't  expect 
you  to  be  writing  anything  romantic,"  she  said. 

Thyrsis,  occupied  with  his  own  thoughts,  observed, 
"I  might  call  it  a  revolutionary  romance." 

"What  is  it  about?" 

He  hesitated.  "It  happens  in  the  middle  ages,"  he 
said.  "There's  a  minstrel  and  a  princess." 

"That  sounds  interesting,"  said  Corydon. 

Now  in  the  period  of  pregnancy  the  artist's  mood  is 
one  of  secretiveness.  But  afterwards  there  comes  a 
time  for  promulgation  and  rejoicing;  and  already  there 
had  been  hints  of  this  in  the  mind  of  Thyrsis.  The 
great  secret  that  he  was  cherishing — what  would  be  the 
world's  reception  of  it?  And  now  suddenly  a  wild  idea 
came  to  him.  He  had  heard  somewhere  that  it  is  the 
women  who  read  fiction.  And  was  not  Corydon  a  per 
fect  specimen  of  the  average  middle-class  young  lady, 
and  therefore  of  that  mysterious  potentiality,  "the 
public",  to  which  he  must  appeal?  Why  not  see  what 
she  would  think  of  it? 

He  took  the  plunge.  "Would  you  like  me  to  read  it 
to  you?"  he  asked. 

"Why,  certainly,"  she  replied,  and  then  added, 
gently,  "If  it  wouldn't  be  a  desecration." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Thyrsis.  "You  see,  when  it's  been 
printed,  all  sorts  of  people  will  read  it." 

So  he  went  back  to  the  house  and  brought  the 
precious  manuscript ;  and  he  placed  Corydon  in  the 
seat  of  inspiration,  and  sat  beside  her  and  read. 

In  many  ways  this  was  a  revolutionary  romance. 
Thyrsis  had  not  spent  any  of  his  time  delving  into 
other  people's  books  for  "local  color" ;  he  was  not  re 
lying  for  his  effects  upon  gabardines  and  hauberks, 
and  a  sprinkling  of  "Yea,  sires,"  and  "prithees."  His 


54  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

castle  was  but  the  vaguely  outlined  background  of  a 
stage  upon  which  living  hearts  wrought  out  their  pas 
sions.  One  saw  the  banquet-hall,  with  its  tapestries  and 
splendor,  and  the  master  of  it,  the  man  of  force ;  there 
were  swift  scenes  that  gave  one  a  glimpse  of  the  age 
long  state  of  things 

"Right   forever  on   the   scaffold, 
Wrong  forever  on  the  throne." 

There  was  a  quarrel,  and  a  cruel  sentence  about  to  be 
executed;  and  then  the  minstrel  came.  His  fame  had 
come  before  him,  and  so  the  despot,  in  half-drunken 
playfulness,  left  the  deciding  of  the  quarrel  to  him. 
He  was  brought  to  the  head  of  the  table,  and 
the  princess  was  led  in ;  and  so  these  two  met  face  to 
face. 

Here  Thyrsis  paused,  and  asked,  "Are  you  inter 
ested?" 

"Go  on,  go  on,"  said  Corydon. 

So  he  read  about  his  princess,  who  was  the  embodi 
ment  of  all  the  virtues  of  the  unknown  goddess  of  his 
fancy.  She  was  proud  yet  humble,  aloof  yet  compas 
sionate,  and  above  all  ineffably  beautiful.  And  as  for 
the  minstrel 

"The  minstrel  was  fair  and  young. 
His  heart  was  of  love  and  fire." 

He  took  his  harp,  and  first  he  pacified  the  quarrel, 
and  then  he  sang  to  the  lady.  He  sang  of  love,  and 
the  poet's  vision  of  beauty ;  but  most  of  all  he  sang  of 
the  free  life  of  the  open.  He  sang  of  the  dreams  and 
the  spirit-companions  of  the  minstrel,  and  of  the 
Wondrous  magic  that  he  wields 


THE    SNARE  55 

"Secrets  of  all  future  ages 

Hover  in  mine  ecstasy ; 
Treasures  never  known  to  mortals 
Hath  my  fancy  hid  for  thee!" 

He  sang  the  spells  that  he  would  weave  for  her,  the  far 
journeys  she  should  take 

"For  thy  soul  a  river  flowing 

Swiftly,  over  golden  sands, 
With  the  singing  of  the  steersman 
Stealing  into  wonderlands !" 


§  2.  THIS  song  was  as  far  as  Thyrsis  had  written, 
and  he  paused.  Corydon  was  sitting  with  her  hands 
clasped,  and  a  look  of  enthrallment  upon  her  face.  "Oh, 
beautiful !  beautiful !"  she  cried. 

A  thrill  of  pleasure  went  through  the  poet.  "You 
like  it,  then?"  he  said. 

"Oh,  I  like  it !"  she  answered.  And  then  she  gazed 
at  him,  with  wide-open  eyes  of  amazement.  "But  you! 
You !"  she  exclaimed. 

"Why  not  I?"  he  asked. 

"How  in  the  world  did  you  do  it?  Where  did  you 
get  it  from?" 

"It  is  mine,"  said  Thyrsis,  quickly. 

"But  I  can't  imagine  it!  I  had  no  idea  you  were 
interested  in  such  things!" 

"But  how  could  you  know  what  I  am  interested  in?" 

"I  see  how  you  live — apart  from  everybody.  And 
you  spend  all  your  time  in  books!" 

Thyrsis  suddenly  recollected  something  which  had 
amused  him  very  much.  Corydon  had  been  reading 


56  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Middlemarch,"  and  had  told  him  that  Dr.  Casaubon 
reminded  her  of  him.  "And  so  Pm  still  just  a  book 
worm  to  you!"  he  laughed. 

"But  isn't  your  interest  in  things  always  intellect 
ual?"  she  asked. 

"Then  you  suppose  I'm  doing  this  just  as  an  exer 
cise  in  technique?"  he  countered. 

"It's  taken  me  quite  by  surprise,"  said  Corydon. 

"We  have  three  faculties  in  us,"  Thyrsis  propounded 
— "intellect,  feeling,  and  will;  and  to  be  a  complete 
human  being,  we  have  to  develop  all  of  them." 

"But  you  spend  so  much  time  piling  up  learning!" 

"I  need  to  know  a  great  many  things,"  he  said.  "I'm 
not  conscious  of  studying  anything  I  don't  need  f^r 
my  purpose." 

"What  is  the  purpose?"  she  asked. 

He  touched  the  precious  manuscript.  "This,"  1  : 
said. 

There  was  a  pause. 

"But  you  lose  so  much  when  you  cut  yourself  off 
from  the  world,"  said  Corydon.  "And  there  are  other 
people,  whom  you  might  help." 

"People  don't  need  my  help ;  or  at  least,  they  don't 
want  it." 

"But  how  can  you  know  that — if  you  never  go  among 
them?" 

"I  can  judge  by  the  lives  they  live." 

"Ah !"  exclaimed  Corydon,  quickly,  "but  people  aren't 
to  blame  for  the  lives  they  live !" 

"Why  not?"  he  asked. 

"Because — they  can't  help  them.  They  are  bound 
fast." 

"They  should  break  loose." 


THE    SNARE  57 

jJThat  is  easy  for  you  to  say,"  said  Corydon.  "You 
.ye  no  ties." 

"I  did  have  them — I  might  have  them  still.  But  I 
<*oke  them." 

"Ah,  but  you  are  a  man !" 

"What  difference  does  that  make?" 

"It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world.     You  can 

irn  money,  you  can  go  away  by  yourself.     But  sup- 

-ose  you  were  a  girl — shut  up  in  a  home,  and  told  that 

.it  was  your  'sphere'?" 

"I'd  fight,"  said  Thyrsis— "I'd  break  my  way  out 
somehow,  never  fear.  If  one  doesn't  break  out,  it 
simply  means  that  his  desire  is  not  strong  enough." 

Thyrsis  had  been  surprised  at  the  depth  of  Corydon's 
interest  in  his  manuscript;  he  had  not  supposed  that 
would  be  so  susceptible  to  anything  of  the  imagi- 
r  -tion.  And  now  he  was  surprised  to  see  that  her 
,  a.nds  were  clenched  tightly,  and  that  she  sat  staring 
i  .d  of  her  intently. 

"Are  you  dissatisfied  with  your  life?"  he  asked. 

"Is  there  anything  in  it  that  I  could  be  satisfied 
1  "."h?"  she  cried. 

"I  had  no  idea  of  that,"  he  said. 

*No,"  she  replied ;  "that  only  shows  how  stupid  you 
in  be!" 

"But — you  never  showed  any  signs " 

"Didn't  you  know  that  I  was  trying  to  prepare  for 
)llege  la.fl  year?" 

"Yes ;  but  you  gave  it  up." 

"What  could  I  do?  I  had  no  help — no  encourage 
ment.  I  was  groping  like  a  blind  person.  And  I  told 
you  about  it." 

"But  I  told  you  what  to  study,"  objected  Thyrsis. 

"Yes,"  said  the  girl;  "but  how  could  I  do  it?     You 


58  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

know  how  to  study — you've  been  taught.  But  I  don't 
know  anything,  and  I  don't  know  how  to  find  anything 
out.  I  began  on  the  Latin,  but  I  didn't  even  know  how 
the  words  should  be  pronounced." 

"Nobody  else  knows  that,"  observed  Thyrsis,  some 
what  inconsequently. 

"It  was  all  so  dulkand  dreary,"  she  went  on — "every 
thing  they  would'  have  had  me  learn.  I  wanted  things 
that  had  life  in  them,  things  that  were  beautiful  and 
worth  while — like  this  book  of  yours,  for  instance." 

"I  am  really  delighted  that  you  like  it,"  said  Thyrsis, 
touched  by  that. 

"Tell  me  the  rest  of  it,"  she  said. 

§  3.  THYRSIS  told  his  story  at  some  length ;  in  the 
ardor  of  her  sympathy  his  imagination  took  fire,  and 
he  told  it  eloquently,  he  discovered  new  beauties  in  it 
that  he  had  not  seen  before.  And  Corydon  listened  with 
growing  delight  and  amazement. 

"So  that  is  the  way  you  spend  your  time !"  she  ex 
claimed. 

"That  is  the  way,"  he  said. 

"And  that  is  why  you  live  like  a  hermit!" 

"Yes,  that  is  why." 

"And  you  think  that  you  would  lose  your  vision  if 
you  went  among  people?" 

"I  know  that  I  should." 

"But  how  do  you  know?" 

"I  know  because  I  have  tried.  You  don't  realize 
how  hard  I  have  to  work  over  a  thing  like  this.  I  have 
carried  it  in  my  mind  for  a  year ;  I  have  lived  for  noth 
ing  else — I  have  literally  had  no  other  interest  in  the 
world.  Every  sentence  I  have  read  to  you  has  been 
the  product  of  work  added  to  work — of  one  impulse 


THE    SNARE  59 

piled  upon  another — of  thinking  and  criticizing  and 
revising.  Just  the  little  bit  I  have  done  has  taken  me 
a  whole  month,  and  I  have  hardly  stopped  to  eat;  it's 
been  my  first  thought  in  the  morning  and  my  last  at 
night.  And  when  the  mood  of  it  comes  to  me,  then  I 
work  in  a  kind  of  frenzy  that  lasts  for  hours  and  even 
days ;  and  if  I  give  up  in  the  middle  and  fall  back,  then 
I  have  to  do  it  all  over  again.  It's  like  toiling  up  a 
mountain-side." 

"I  see,"  whispered  Corydon.  "And  then,  do  you  ex 
pect  to  have  no  human  relationships  as  long  as  you 
live?" 

Thyrsis  pondered  for  a  moment.  "Did  you  ever  read 
Mrs.  Browning's  poem,  'A  Musical  Instrument'?"  he 
asked. 

"No,"  she  answered. 

"It's  a  most  beautiful  poem,"  he  said;  "and  it's 
hardly  ever  quoted  or  read,  that  I  can  find.  It  tells  how 
the  great  god  Pan  came  down  by  the  river-bank,  and 
cut  one  of  the  reeds  to  make  himself  a  pipe.  He  sat 
there  and  played  his  music  upon  it 

'Sweet,  sweet,  sweet,  O  Pan! 

Piercing  sweet  by  the  river ! 
Blinding  sweet,  O  great  god  Pan! 
The  sun  on  the  hill  forgot  to  die, 
And  the  lilies  reviv'd,  and  the  dragon-fly 

Came  back  to  dream  on  the  river. 

'Yet  half  a  beast  is  the  great  god  Pan, 

To  laugh  as  he  sits  by  the  river, 
Making  a  poet  out  of  a  man. 
The  true  gods  sigh  for  the  cost  and  pain, — 
For  the  reed  which  grows  nevermore  again 
As  a  reed  with  the  reeds  in  the  river.'  " 


60  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis  paused.  "Do  you  see  what  it  means?"  he 
asked. 

"Yes,"  said  Corydon,  «I  see." 

"  'Making  a  poet  out  of  a  man !'  That  is  one  of 
the  finest  lines  I  know.  And  that's  the  way  I  feel  about 
it — I  have  given  up  all  other  duties  in  the  world.  If  I 
can  write  one  book,  or  even  one  poem,  that  will  be  an 
inspiration  to  men  in  the  future — why,  then  I  have 
done  far  more  than  I  could  do  by  a  lifetime  given  to 
helping  people  around  me." 

"I  never  understood  before,"  said  Corydon. 

"That  is  the  idea  the  minstrel  tries  to  voice  to  the 
princess.  At  first  he  pours  out  his  soul  to  her ;  but 
then,  when  he  finds  that  she  loves  him,  he  is  afraid,  and 
tries  to  persuade  her  not  to  come  with  him.  He  tells 
her  how  lonely  and  stern  his  life  is ;  and  she  has  been 
born  to  a  gentle  life — she  has  her  station  and  her  duty 
in  the  world.  But  the  more  he  pleads  the  hardness 
of  his  life,  the  more  she  sees  she  must  go  with  him. 
Even  if  the  end  be  death  to  her,  still  she  will  be  an 
inspiration  to  him,  and  give  wings  to  his  music.  'Be 
silent,'  she  tells  him — 'let  me  fling  myself  away  for  a 
song!  To  do  one  deed  that  the  world  remembers,  to 
utter  one  word  that  lives  forever — that  is  worth  all  the 
failure  and  the  agony  that  can  come  to  one  woman  in 
her  lifetime !'  " 

Corydon  sat  writh  her  hands  clasped.  "Yes,"  she 
said,  "that  is  the  way  she  would  feel !" 

"I'm  glad  to  hear  you  say  that, "  remarked  the  other. 
"I  must  make  it  real;  and  I've  been  afraid  about  it. 
Would  she  really  go  with  him?" 

"She  would  go  if  she  loved  him,"  said  Corydon. 

"If  she  loved  him.      But  she  must  love  his  art  still 


THE    SNARE  61 

"She  must  love  him"  said  Corydon. 

Thyrsis  shook  his  head.  "It  would  not  do  for  her 
to  go  with  him  for  that,"  he  said. 

"Why  not?     Doesn't  he  love  her?"       . 

"Yes ;  but  he  is  afraid  to  tell  her  so.  They  dare  not 
let  that  sway  them." 

"I  don't  understand.     Why  not?" 

"Because  personal  love  is  a  limited  thing,  and  com 
paratively  an  ignoble  thing." 

"I  don't  see  how  there  can  be  anything  mare  noble 
than  true  love  between  a  man  and  a  woman,"  declared 
Corydon.  * 

"It  depends  on  what  you  mean  by  'true'  love,"  re 
plied  Thyrsis.  "If  two  people  love  each  other  for  their 
own  sakes,  and  go  together,  they  soon  come  to  know 
each  other,  and  then  they  are  satisfied — and  their 
growth  is  at  an  end.  What  I  conceive  is  that  two 
people  must  lose  themselves,  and  all  thought  of  them 
selves,  in  their  common  love  for  something  higher — 
for  some  great  ideal,  some  purpose,  some  vision  of 
perfection.  And  they  seek  this  together,  and  they  re 
joice  in  finding  it,  each  for  the  other;  and  so  they  have 
always  progress  and  growth — they  stand  for  something 
new  to  each  other  every  day  of  their  lives.  To  such 
love  there  is  no  end,  and  no  chance  of  weariness  or 
satiety." 

"I  had  never  thought  of  it  just  so,"  said  the  girl. 
"But  surely  there  must  be  a  personal  love  in  the  be 
ginning." 

"I  don't  know,"  he  responded.  "I  hadn't  thought 
about  that.  I'm  afraid  I'm  impersonal  by  nature." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "that's  what  has  puzzled  me.  Don't 
you  love  human  beings?" 

"Not  as  a  rule,"  he  confessed. 


62  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"But  then — what  is  it  you  are  interested  in?  Your 
self?" 

"People  tell  me  that's  the  case.  And  there's  a  sense 
in  which  it's  true — I'm  wrapped  up  in  the  thought  of 
myself  as  an  art-work.  I've  a  certain  vision  of  the 
possibilities  of  my  own  being,  and  I'm  trying  to  realize 
it.  And  if  I  do,  then  I  can  write  books  and  communi 
cate  it  to  other  people,  so  that  they  can  judge  it,  and 
see  if  it's  any  better  than  the  vision  they  have.  It  is 
a  higher  kind  of  unselfishness,  I  think." 

"I  see,"  said  Corydon.  "It's  not  easy  to  under 
stand." 

"No  one  understands  it,"  he  replied.  "People  are 
taught  that  they  must  sacrifice  themselves  for  others; 
and  they  do  it,  blindly  and  stupidly,  and  never  ask  if 
the  other  person  is  worthy  of  the  sacrifice — and  still 
less  if  they  themselves  have  anything  worth  sacrificing." 

Corydon  had  clenched  her  hands  suddenly.  "How 
I  hate  the  religion  of  self-sacrifice!"  she  cried. 

"Mine  is  a  religion  of  self-development,"  said 
Thyrsis.  "I  am  sacrificing  myself  for  what  other 
people  ought  to  be." 

§  4.  THEY  came  back  after  a  time,  to  the  subject 
of  love;  and  to  the  ideal  of  it  which  Thyrsis  meant  to 
set  forth  in  the  book.  It  was  the  duty  of  every  soul 
to  seek  the  highest  potentiality  of  which  it  had  vision ; 
and  as  one  did  that  for  himself,  so  he  did  it  for  the 
person  he  loved.  There  could  be  no  higher  love  than 
this — to  treat  the  thing  beloved  as  one's  self,  to  be 
perpetually  dissatisfied  with  it,  to  scourge  it  to  new 
endeavor,  to  hold  it  in  immortal  discontent. 

This  was  a  point  about  which  they  argued  with  eager 
excitement.  To  Thyrsis,  love  itself  was  a  prize  to  be 


THE    SNARE  63 

held  before  the  loved  one ;  whereas  Corydon  argued  that 
love  must  exist  before  such  a  union  could  be  thought 
of.  Her  cheeks  flushed  and  her  eyes  shone  as  she  main 
tained  the  thesis  that  the  princess  could  not  go  with  the 
minstrel  unless  his  love  was  given  to  her  irrevocably. 

"If  you  mean  by  love  a  sense  of  oneness  in  the  pur 
suit  of  an  ideal,  then  I  agree  with  you,"  said  Thyrsis. 
"But  if  you  mean  what  love  generally  means — a  mutual 
admiration,  the  worshipping  of  another  personality — 
then  I  don't." 

"And  are  lovers  not  even  to  be  interesting  to  each 
other?"  cried  Corydon. 

But  the  poet  did  not  shrink  even  from  that.  "I 
don't  think  a  woman  could  be  interesting  to  me — ex 
cept  in  so  far  as  she  was  growing.  And  she  must 
always  know  that  if  she  stopped  growing,  she  would 
cease  to  be  interesting.  That  is  not  a  matter  of  any 
body's  will,  it  seems  to  me — it  is  a  fact  of  soul-chem- 
istry." 

"I  don't  think  you  will  find  many  women  to  love  you 
on  that  basis,"  said  Corydon. 

"I  never  expected  to  find  but  one,"  was  Thyrsis'  re 
ply;  "and  I  may  not  find  even  one." 

She  sat  watching  him  for  a  moment.  "I  had  never 
realized  the  sublimity  of  your  egotism,"  she  said.  "It 
would  never  occur  to  you  to  judge  anyone  else  by  your 
own  standards,  would  it?" 

"That  is  very  well  put,"  laughed  Thyrsis.  "As  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  have  a  maxim  that  I  count  all  things 
lost  in  the  world  but  my  own  soul." 

"Why  is  that?" 

"Because  I  can  depend  on  my  own  soul;  and  I  have 
not  yet  met  anything  else  in  life  of  which  I  can  say 
that." 


64  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Again  there  was  a  pause.  "You  are  as  hard  as 
iron!"  exclaimed  the  girl. 

"I  am  harder  than  anything  you  can  find  for  your 
simile,"  he  answered.  "I  know  simply  that  there  is  no 
force  existing  that  can  turn  me  from  my  task." 

"You  might  meet  some  woman  who  would  fascinate 
you." 

"Perhaps,"  he  replied.  "I  have  done  things  I'm 
ashamed  of,  and  I've  a  wholesome  fear  of  doing  more 
of  them.  But  I  know  that  that  woman,  whoever  she 
might  he,  would  wake  up  some  morning  and  find  me 
missing." 

Then  for  a  while  he  sat  staring  at  the  eddies  in  the 
pool  below.  "I  have  a  vision  of  another  kind  of  woman," 
he  said — "a  woman  to  whom  my  ideal  would  be  the 
same  compelling  force  that  it  is  to  me — a  living 
thing  that  would  drive  her,  that  she  was  both  master 
of,  and  slave  to,  as  I  am.  So  that  she  would  feel  no 
fears,  and  ask  no  favors !  So  that  she  would  not  want 
mercy,  nor  ask  pledges — but  just  give  herself,  as  I 
give  myself,  and  take  the  chances  of  the  game.  Don't 
you  think  there  may  be  just  one  such  woman  in  the 
world?" 

"Perhaps,"  was  the  reply.  "But  then — mightn't  a 
woman  be  sure  of  your  ideal,  but  not  of  you?" 

"As  to  that,"  said  Thyrsis,  "she  would  have  to  know 
me." 

"As  to  that,"  said  Corydon,  "she  would  have  to  love 
you." 

And  Thyrsis  smiled.  "As  in  most  arguments,"  he 
said,  "it's  mainly  a  matter  of  definitions." 

§  5.     AT  this  point  there  came  a  call  from  the  dis- 


THE    SNARE  65 

tance,  and  Corydon  started.      "There  is  mother,"  she 
exclaimed.     "How  the  afternoon  has  flown!" 

"And  must  you  go  home  now?"  he  asked. 

"I'm  afraid  so,"  she  replied.     "We  have  a  long  row." 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said.  "I  wanted  to  advise  you  about 
books  to  read.  You  must  let  me  help  you  to  find  what 
you  are  seeking." 

"Ah,"  said  Corydon,  "if  you  only  will!" 

"I  will  do  anything  I  can,"  he  said.  "I  am  ashamed 
of  not  having  helped  you  before." 

They  had  risen  and  started  towards  the  house. 
"Can't  you  come  to-morrow,  and  we  can  talk  it  over," 
he  said. 

"But  I  thought  you  were  going  to  work,"  she  ob 
jected. 

"I  can  spare  another  day,"  he  replied.  "A  rest 
won't  hurt  me,  I  know.  And  it's  been  a  real  pleasure 
to  talk  to  you  this  afternoon." 

So  they  settled  it;  and  Thyrsis  saw  them  off  in  the 
boat,  and  then  he  went  back  to  the  little  cabin. 

On  the  steps  he  stood  still.  "Corydon !"  he  muttered. 
"Little  Corydon!" 

That  was  always  the  way  he  thought  of  her ;  not  only 
because  he  had  known  her  when  she  was  a  child,  but  be 
cause  this  expressed  his  conception  of  her — she  was  so 
gentle  and  peaceable  and  meek.  She  was  now  eighteen, 
and  he  was  only  twenty,  but  he  felt  towards  her  as  a 
grandfather  might.  But  now  had  come  this  new  revela 
tion,  that  astonished  him.  She  had  been  deeply  stirred 
by  his  work — she  had  loved  it;  and  this  was  no  affee- 
tation,  it  was  out  of  her  inmost  heart.  And  she  was 
not  really  contented  at  all — she  had  quite  a  hunger 
for  life  in  her ! 

It  had  been  like  an  explosion;  the  barriers  had  been 


66  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

destroyed  between  them,  and  he  saw  her  as  she  really 
was.  And  he  could  hardly  believe  it — all  through  the 
adventures  that  followed  he  would  find  himself  stand 
ing  in  the  same  kind  of  daze,  whispering  to  himself — 
"Corydon!  Little  Corydon !" 

He  did  not  try  to  do  any  work  that  evening.  He 
thought  about  her,  and  the  problem  of  her  life.  She 
had  stirred  him  strangely;  he  saw  her  beautiful  with 
a  new  kind  of  beauty.  He  resolved  that  he  would  put 
her  upon  the  way  to  some  of  the  joy  she  sought. 

She  came  early  the  next  morning,  and  they  sat  by  the 
lake-shore  and  talked.  They  talked  about  the  things 
she  needed  to  study,  and  how  she  should  study  them; 
about  the  books  she  had  read  and  the  books  she  was  to 
read  next.  And  from  this  they  went  on  to  a  hundred 
questions  of  literature  and  philosophy  and  life.  They 
became  eager  and  excited;  their  thoughts  took  wings, 
and  they  lost  all  sense  of  time  and  place.  There  were 
so  many  things  to  be  discussed! 

Corydon,  in  spite  of  all  her  anti-clericalism,  believed 
in  immortality ;  she  laid  claim  to  intuitions  and  illumina 
tions  concerning  it.  And  to  Thyrsis,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  idea  of  immortality  was  the  consummation  of 
all  unfaith.  To  him  life  was  a  bubble  upon  the  stream 
of  time,  a  shadow  of  clouds  upon  the  mountains ;  there 
was  nothing  about  it  that  could  be  or  should  be  im 
mortal. 

"The  act  of  faith,"  he  cried,  "is  to  give  ourselves 
into  the  arms  of  life,  to  take  it  as  it  comes,  to  re 
joice  in  its  infinite  unfoldment,  the  'plastic  dance  of 
circumstance';  to  behold  the  budding  flower  and  the 
new-born  suns  as  equal  expressions  of  the  joy  of  be 
coming.  But  people  are  weak,  they  love  themselves, 
and  they  set  themselves  up  as  the  centre  of  existence!" 


THE    SNARE  67 

But  Corydon  was  personal,  and  loved  life;  and  she 
stood  out  that  death  was  unthinkable — that  she  had 
the  sense  of  infinity  within  her.  Thyrsis  strove  to  make 
her  see  that  one  was  to  wreak  one's  hunger  for  infinity 
at  each  moment,  and  not  put  it  off  to  any  future  age ; 
that  life  was  a  thing  for  itself,  and  needed  no  sequel 
to  justify  it.  "It  is  a  free  gift,  and  we  have  no  claim 
upon  it ;  we  must  take  it  on  the  terms  of  the  giver." 

From  that  they  came  to  religion.  Thyrsis  loved  the 
forms  of  the  old  faiths,  because  of  the  poetry  there  was 
in  them ;  and  so  he  wrestled  with  Corydon's  paganism. 
He  tried  to  show  her  how  one  could  read  "Paradise 
Lost"  and  the  English  prayer-book,  precisely  as  one 
read  Virgil  and  Homer ;  to  which  Corydon  answered 
that  she  had  been  to  Sunday-school. 

"But  you  once  believed  in  Santa  Clans !"  he  retorted. 
"And  does  that  make  you  quarrel  with  him  now?  Every 
time  you  read  a  novel,  don't  you  pretend  to  believe  in 
people  who  never  existed?" 

He  went  on  to  show  her  how  much  she  lost  of  the 
sublime  and  inspiring  things  of  the  past.  He  took  the 
story  of  Jesus.  It  mattered  not  in  the  least  if  it  was 
fiction  or  fact — it  was  there,  as  an  achievement  of  the 
human  spirit.  He  showed  her  the  man  of  the  gospels 
— not  the  stained-glass  god  with  royal  robes  and  shin 
ing  crown,  but  the  humble  workingman,  with  his  dream 
of  a  heaven  nearby,  and  a  father  who  loved  his  chil 
dren  without  distinction.  He  went  about  among  the 
poor  and  humble,  the  world's  first  revolutionist;  teach 
ing  the  supremacy  of  the  soul — a  doctrine  which  was  to 
be  as  dynamite  beneath  the  pillars  of  all  established  in 
stitutions.  He  lived  as  a  tramp  and  an  outcast,  and  he 
died  the  death  of  a  criminal ;  and  now  those  who  had 
murdered  him  were  using  his  doctrines  to  enslave  the 


68  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

world !  — All  this  was  a  new  idea  to  Corydon,  and  she 
resolved  forthwith  that  she  would  begin  her  readings 
with  the  New  Testament. 

§  6.  So  it  went,  until  Thyrsis  looked  up  with  a  start, 
and  saw  that  the  shadows  were  falling.  It  was  five 
o'clock,  and  they  had  not  stopped  to  eat!  Even  so, 
they  had  no  time  to  cook,  but  made  a  cold  meal — and 
talked  all  the  time  they  were  eating. 

Then  Corydon  said,  "I  must  start  for  home." 

"You  won't  want  any  supper,"  said  Thyrsis.  "Let's 
see  the  sunset  first." 

"But  mother  will  be  expecting  me,"  she  objected 

"She'll  know  you're  all  right,"  he  replied. 

So  they  climbed  the  hill,  and  sat  and  watched  the 
sunset  and  the  rising  full  moon.  The  air  was  clear, 
and  the  sky  like  opal,  and  the  pale,  pearly  tints  of  the 
clouds  were  ravishing  to  behold.  To  Thyrsis  it  seemed 
that  these  colors  were  an  image  of  the  soul  that  was 
disclosed  to  him.  He  would  have  been  at  a  loss  for 
words  to  describe  the  extraordinary  sense  of  purity  that 
Corydon  gave  to  him ;  it  was  not  simply  her  maiden 
hood — it  was  something  far  more  rare  than  that.  Here 
was  an  utterly  perfect  human  soul ;  a  soul  without  speck 
or  blemish — without  a  base  idea,  with  no  trace  of  a 
vanity,  unaware  what  a  pretense  might  be.  The  joy 
and.  wonder  of  life  welled  spontaneously  in  her,  she 
moved  to  a  noble  impulse  as  a  cloud  moves  before  the 
wind.  She  was  like  a  creature  from  the  skies  they 
were  watching. 

And  here,  in  the  silver  moonlight,  a  memorable  hour 
came  to  them.  Thyrsis  told  her  of  his  consecration,  and 
why  he  lived  his  hermit-life.  He  had  known  for  years 
that  he  was  not  as  other  men ;  and  now  every  hour  it 


THE    SNARE  69 

was  becoming  clearer  to  him.  He  shrunk  from  the 
word,  because  it  had  been  desecrated  by  the  world;  but 
it  was  Genius.  More  and  more  frequently  there  was 
coming  to  him  this  strange  ecstasy,  the  source  of  which 
he  could  not  guess ;  it  was  like  the  giving  way  of  flood 
gates  within  him — the  pouring  in  of  a  tide  of  wonder 
and  joy.  It  made  him  tremble  like  a  leaf,  it  made  him 
cry  aloud  and  fall  down  upon  the  ground  exhausted. 
And  yet,  whatever  the  strain  might  be,  he  never  lost 
his  grip  upon  himself;  rather,  all  the  powers  of  his 
mind  seemed  to  be  multiplied — it  seemed  as  if  all  exist 
ence  became  one  with  his  soul. 

Never  before  had  he  uttered  a  word  of  this  to  any 
one.  No  one  could  understand  the  burden  it  had  laid 
upon  him.  For  this  was  the  thing  that  all  the  world 
was  seeking,  for  the  lack  of  which  the  world  was  dying ; 
and  it  was  his  to  give  or  to  withhold,  to  lose  or  to  save. 
He  had  to  forge  it  and  shape  it,  he  had  to  embody  it,  ta 
set  it  forth  in  images  and  symbols.  And  that  meant 
a  terrific  labor,  a  feat  of  mental  and  emotional  endur 
ance  quite  indescribable.  He  must  hold  it,  though  it 
burned  like  fire ;  he  must  clutch  it  to  his  bosom,  though 
it  tore  at  his  heart-strings. 

"Sometimes,"  he  said,  "I  fail  and  have  to  give  up; 
and  then  I  have  nothing  but  a  memory  without  words 
— or  perhaps  a  few  broken  phrases  that  seem  mere 
nonsense.  Then  I  am  like  a  man  who  has  seen  some 
loved  one  drowned  or  burned  to  death  before  his  eyes. 
It  is  a  thing  so  ineffable,  so  precious ;  and  some  power 
seeks  to  tear  it  away  from  me,  to  bear  it  into  oblivion 
forever.  I  can't  know,  of  course — it  might  come  to 
some  one  else — or  it  might  never  come  again.  The 
feeling  I  have  is  like  that  of  a  mother  for  an  unborn 
child ;  if  I  do  not  give  it  life,  no  one  ever  will.  And 


70  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

don't  you  see — compared  with  that,  what  does  anything 
else  count?  I  would  lie  down  and  be  crushed  to  pieces, 
if  that  would  help ;  truly,  I  would  suffer  less  than  I 
suffer  in  what  I  try  to  do.  And  so,  the  things  that 
other  men  care  for — they  simply  don't  exist  for  me.  I 
must  have  a  little  money,  because  I  have  to  have  some 
thing  to  eat,  and  a  place  to  work  in.  But  I  don't  want 
position  or  fame — I  don't  shrink  from  any  ridicule  or 
humiliation.  It  seems  like  a  mad  thing  to  say,  but  I 
have  nothing  to  do  either  with  men's  evil  or  with  their 
good.  I  am  not  bound  by  any  of  their  duties ;  I  can't 
have  any  country  or  any  home,  I  can't  have  wife  or 
children — I  can  hardly  even  have  any  friends.  Don't 
you  see?" 

"Yes,"  whispered  Corydon,  deeply  moved,  "I  see." 
"Look,"  he  went  on — "see  all  the  vice  and  misery 
in  the  world — the  cruelty  and  greed  and  hate.  And 
see  all  the  stupid  and  petty  things,  the  narrow  motives, 
the  vanities  and  the  jealousies!  And  all  that  is  be 
cause  people  haven't  this  thing  that  has  come  to  me; 
they  don't  know  the  possibilities  of  life,  they  lack  the 
sense  of  its  preciousness  and  sacredness.  And  they 
seek  and  seek — and  go  astray !  Take  drunkenness,  for 
instance;  that  brings  them  joy,  but  it's  a  false  scent, 
it  leads  them  over  a  precipice.  I've  been  down  at  the 
bottom  of  it — you  know  why  I  have  to  go  there,  and 
what  I've  seen.  And  that  is  where  the  best  of  men's 
faculties  go — yes,  it's  literally  true!  The  men  who  are 
dull  and  plodding,  they  are  contented ;  it's  the  men  who 
are  adventurous  and  aspiring  who  come  to  that  preci 
pice.  I  walk  down  an  avenue  and  see  the  lines  of 
saloons  with  their  gleaming  lights,  and  that  thought  is 
like  a  scream  of  anguish  in  my  soul ;  there  came  a 
phrase  to  me  once,  that  I  wanted  to  cry  out  to  people 


THE    SNARE  71 

— 'the  graveyards  of  your  genius!  the  graveyards  of 
your  genius !' ' 

Corydon  was  gazing  at  his  uplifted  face.  She  said, 
"That  is  how  Jesus  must  have  felt,  when  he  wept  o\er 
Jerusalem." 

"Yes,"  said  Thyrsis.  "It  is  a  new  religion  trying 
to  be  born.  Only  nowadays  they  don't  persecute  you, 
they  just  ignore  you.  They  don't  hang  you  up  on 
a  cross  and  make  you  conspicuous  and  picturesque — 
they  ridicule  you  and  let  you  starve.  And  that  is  what 
I  face,  you  see.  I've  saved  a  hundred  dollars — just 
barely  enough  to  buy  me  food  until  I've  written  the 
book!" 

"And  other  people  have  so  much!"  cried  Corydon. 

"So  much — and  no  idea  what  to  do  with  it.  They 
just  fling  it  away,  in  a  drunken  frenzy.  And  down 
below  are  the  poor,  who  slave  to  make  civilization  pos 
sible.  Such  lives  as  they  have  to  live — I  can't  ever  get 
the  thought  out  of  my  mind,  not  in  any  happiest  mo 
ment  !  I  feel  as  if  I  were  a  man  who  had  escaped  from 
a  beleaguered  city,  ajgd  it  all  depended  upon  me  to  carry 
the  tidings  and  ib^ria^  relief.  I'm  their  one  hope,  and 
if  I  fail  them  Pni  a  traitor,  an  accursed  being!  They 
are  ignorant  and  helpless,  and  their  cry  comes  to  me 
like  some  great  storm-wind  of  grief  and  despair.  Oh, 
some  day  I  mean  to  utter  words  that  will  reach  them — 
I  can't  fail!  I  can't  fail!" 

"No !"  whispered  Corydon.     "You  must  not  fail !" 

They  sat  in  silence  for  a  while. 

"How  I  wish  that  I  could  help  you!"  she  said. 

"Who  can  tell?"  he  answered.     "Perhaps  you  may.  . 
A  true  friend  is  a  rare  thing  to  find." 

"I  would  do  anything  in  the  world  to  share  in  such 
a  work." 


72  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"You  really  mean  that?     As  hard  as  it  is?" 

"I  would  bear  anything,"  she  said.  "I  would  go  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth  for  it.  I  would  fling  away  the 
whole  world — just  as  you  have  done." 

"Ah,  but  are  you  strong  enough?  Could  you  stand 
it?" 

"I  don't  know  that — I'm  only  a  child.  But  I  wouldn't 
mind  dying." 

And  so  it  came.  It  came  as  the  dawn  comes,  un 
heralded,  unheeded — spreading  wider,  till  the  day  is 
there.  Months  afterwards  they  talked  about  it,  and 
Thyrsis  asked,  "When  did  I  propose  to  you?" 

"I  don't  think  you  ever  proposed  to  me,"  she  an 
swered.  "It  just  came.  It  had  to  come — there  was 
no  other  way." 

"But  when  did  I  first  kiss  you?"  he  asked. 

"I  don't  know  even  that,"  she  said,  and  pondered. 

"Did  I  kiss  you  that  night  when  we  sat  on  the  hill?" 
he  asked. 

"I  wouldn't  have  known  it  if  you  had,"  said  Corydon. 
"It  was  as  natural  for  you  to  kiss  me  as  it  was  for  me 
to  draw  my  breath." 

§  7.  THE  moon  was  high  when  they  went  down  the 
hill,  and  he  rowed  her  home.  They  were  silent  with  the 
awe  that  was  upon  them.  They  found  the  people  at 
home  in  a  panic,  but  they  scarcely  knew  this — and  they 
scarcely  troubled  to  explain. 

Then  Thyrsis  went  home,  and  spent  half  the  night 
roaming  about  in  excitement.  And  early  in  the  morn 
ing  he  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of  his  canvas-cot,  whis 
pering  to  himself  again,  "Corydon !  Little  Corydon !" 

He  could  not  think  of  work  that  day,  but  set  out  to 
walk  to  the  village  by  the  lonely  mountain-road;  and 


THE    SNARE  73 

half-way  there  he  met  the  girl,  coming  in  the  other 
direction.  There  was  a  light  of  wonder  in  her  eyes ; 
and  also  there  was  perplexity.  For  all  that  morning 
she  had  been  whispering  to  herself,  "Thyrsis  !  Thyrsis  !" 

They  sat  by  the  roadside  to  talk  it  over. 

"Corydon,"  he  began,  "I've  been  thinking  about  what 
we  said  last  night,  and  it  frightens  me  horribly.  And 
I  want  to  ask  you  please  not  to  think  about  it  any 
more.  I  could  not  take  anyone  else  into  my  life — before 
God,  I  couldn't  be  so  cruel.  I  have  been  shuddering  at 
the  thought  of  it.  Oh  please,  please,  run  away  from 
me — before  it  is  too  late !" 

"Is  that  the  way  it  seems?"  she  asked. 

"Corydon !"  he  cried.  "I  am  a  tormented  man ! 
There  can't  be  any  happiness  in  the  world  for  me.  And 
you  are  so  beautiful  and  so  pure  and  so  good — I  simply 
dare  not  think  of  it !  You  must  be  happy,  Corydon !" 

"I  have  never  yet  been  happy,"  she  said. 

"Listen,"  he  went  on — "there  is  a  stanza  of  Walter 
Scott's  that  came  to  me  this  morning — an  outlaw  song. 
It  seemed  to  sum  up  all  my  feeling  about  it: 

"  'Maiden !  a  nameless  life  I  lead, 

A  nameless  death  I'll  die; 
The  fiend  whose  lantern  lights  the  mead 
Were  better  mate  than  I !'  ' 

Corydon  sat  staring  ahead.  "You  can't  frighten  me 
away  from  you,"  she  said,  in  a  low  voice.  "It  isn't 
worth  your  while  to  try.  But  let  me  tell  you  what  I 
came  to  say.  I'm  so  ignorant  and  so  helpless — I  didn't 
see  how  I  could  be  of  any  use  to  you.  And  so  I  wanted 
to  tell  you  that  you  must  do  whatever  seemed  best  to 
you — just  don't  count  me  at  all  You  see  what  I  mean 


74  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

— I'm  not  afraid  for  myself,  but  just  for  you.  I 
couldn't  bear  the  thought  that  I  might  be  in  your  way. 
I  felt  I  had  to  come  and  tell  you  that,  before  you  went 
back  to  your  work." 

Now  Thyrsis  had  set  out  with  mighty  battlements 
reared  about  him ;  and  not  all  the  houris  and  the  cour 
tesans  of  all  the  ages  could  have  found  a  way  to  breach 
them.  But  before  those  simple  sentences  of  Corydon's, 
uttered  in  her  gentle  voice,  and  with  her  maiden's  gaze 
of  wonder — the  battlements  crumbled  and  rocked. 

And  that  was  always  the  way  of  it.  There  were 
endless  new  explanations  and  new  attitudes,  new  excur 
sions  and  discoveries.  They  would  part  with  a  certain 
understanding,  but  they  never  knew  with  what  view  they 
would  meet  in  the  morning.  They  were  swung  from  one 
extreme  to  the  other,  from  certitude  to  doubt,  from  joy 
to  dismay  and  despair.  And  so,  day  after  day  they 
would  sit  and  talk,  for  uncounted  hours.  Corydon 
would  come  to  the  little  cabin,  or  Thyrsis  would  come  to 
the  village,  and  they  would  wander  about  the  roads  or 
the  woods,  forgetting  their  meals,  forgetting  all  the 
world.  Once  they  wandered  away  into  the  mountains, 
and  they  sat  until  the  dusk  closed  round  them ;  they 
were  almost  lost  that  night. 

"Of  course,"  Thyrsis  had  been  saying,  "we  should 
not  be  married  like  other  men  and  women." 

"No,"  said  Corydon,  "of  course  not." 

"We  should  be  brother  and  sister,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  she  assented. 

"And  it  would  not  be  real  marriage — I  mean,  it  would 
be  just  for  the  world's  eyes." 

"So  I  don't  see  how  it  could  hinder  you,"  Corydon 
added.  "Whatever  I  did  that  was  wrong,  you  would 
tell  me.  And  then  too,  about  money.  I  shouldn't  be 


THE    SNARE  75 

any  burden;  for  I  have  twenty-five  dollars  a  month  of 
my  own." 

"I  had  no  idea  of  that,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"I've  only  had  it  for  a  year,"  said  Corydon.  "An 
aunt  left  me  nearly  four  thousand  dollars.  I  can't 
touch  the  principal  until  I'm  thirty,  but  I  have  the  in 
come,  and  that  wrill  buy  me  everything  I  need.  And 
so  it  would  be  just  as  if  you  didn't  have  me  to  think 
of," 

''I  don't  think  the  money  side  matters  so  much,"  was 
his  reply.  "It's  only  this  summer,  you  see — until  I've 
finished  the  book." 

§  8.  THE  key  to  all  the  future  was  the  book ;  but 
ala\s,  the  book  was  not  coming  on.  How  could  one 
write  amid  such  excitement?  This  was  a  new  kind  of 
wine  in  Thyrsis'  blood.  This  was  reality !  And  before 
it  his  dream-phantoms  seemed  to  have  dissolved  into 
nothingness. 

They  would  make  a  compact  for  so  many  days,  and 
he  would  start  to  work ;  but  he  would  find  himself  think 
ing  of  Corydon,  and  new  problems  would  arise,  and 
he  would  take  to  writing  her  notes — and  finally  realize 
in  despair  that  he  might  as  well  go  and  see  her. 

Meantime  Corydon  would  be  wrestling  with  tasks  of 
her  own.  They  had  talked  over  her  development,  and 
agreed  that  what  she  needed  was  discipline.  And  be 
cause  Thyrsis  had  read  her  some  of  Goethe's  lyrics, 
she  had  decided  to  begin  with  German.  Thyrsis  had 
wasted  a  great  deal  of  time  with  German  courses  in 
college,  and  so  he  was  able  to  tell  her  everything  not 
to  do.  He  got  her  a  little  primer  of  grammar,  just 
enough  to  make  clear  the  language-structure ;  and  then 
he  set  her  to  acquiring  a  vocabulary.  He  had  little  books 


76  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

full  of  words  that  he  had  prepared  for  himself,  and 
these  she  drilled  into  her  brain,  all  day  and  nearly  all 
night.  She  stopped  for  nothing  but  to  eat — in  the 
woods  when  the  weather  was  fair  and  in  her  room 
when  it  rained,  she  studied  words,  words,  words !  And 
she  made  amazing  progress — while  Thyrsis  was  wrest 
ling  with  his  angels  she  read  Grimm's  fairy  tales,  and 
some  of  Heyse's  "Novellen,"  and  "Hermann  and 
Dorothea,"  and  "Wilhelm  Tell." 

But  these  were  children's  tasks,  and  her  pilgrimage 
was  one  of  despair.  Above  were  the  heights  where 
Thyrsis  dwelt,  inaccessible,  almost  invisible ;  and  how 
many  years  must  she  toil  to  reach  them!  She  would 
come  to  him  with  tears  in  her  eyes — tears  of  shame  for 
her  ignorance  and  her  stupidity.  }  And  then  Thyrsis 
would  kiss  the  tears  away,  and  tell  her  how  many 
brilliant  and  clever  women  he  had  met,  who  had  the 
souls  of  dolls  behind  all  their  display  of  culture. 

So  Corydon  would  escape  that  unhappiness — but 
alas,  only  to  fall  into  another  kind.  For  she  was  a 
maiden,  beautiful  and  tender,  and  ineffably  precious  to 
Thyrsis ;  and  when  they  met,  their  hands  would  come 
together — it  was  as  natural  for  them  to  embrace  as  for 
the  flowers  to  grow.  And  this  would  lead  to  moods  of 
weakness  an(J  satisfaction — not  to  that  divine  discon 
tent,  that  rage  of  impatience  which  Thyrsis  craved. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  Corydon  grew  more  and  more 
in  love  with  him,  and  more  willing  to  cling  to  him ; 
and  he  was  savage  because  of  his  own  complaisance. 
They  would  spend  hours,  exchanging  endearments  and 
whispering  youthful  absurdities ;  and  then,  the  next 
day,  he  would  write  a  note  of  protest,  and  Corydon 
would  be  wild  with  misery,  and  would  tear  up  his  love- 
notes,  and  vow  in  tears  that  he  should  never  touch  her 


TtfE   SNARE  77 

hand  again.  Now  and  then  he  would  try  to  suggest 
to  her  that  what  she  needed  for  the  fulfillment  of  her 
life  was  not  a  madman  like  himself,  but  a  husband  who 
would  love  her  and  cherish  her,  as  other  women  were 
loved  and  cherished;  and  there  was  nothing  in  all  the 
world  that  galled  her  quite  so  much  as  this. 

§  9.  THERE  came  a  time  when  all  these  happenings 
could  no  longer  be  hid  from  parents.  This  unthink 
able  "engagement"  had  to  be  announced,  and  the  furies 
of  grief  and  rage  and  despair  unchained.  No  one  could 
realize  the  change  that  had  come  over  Corydon — Cory- 
don,  the  meek  and  long-suffering,  who  now  was  turned 
to  granite,  and  immovable  as  the  everlasting  hills.  As 
for  Thyrsis,  all  kinds  of  madness  had  come  from  him, 
and  were  expected  from  him.  But  even  he  was  appalled 
at  the  devastation  which  this  thunderbolt  caused. 

"You  have  ruined  your  career  !  You  have  ruined  your 
career!"  was  the  cry  that  rang  in  his  ears  all  day. 
And  he  knew  what  the  world  meant  by  this.  Young  men 
of  talent  who  wished  to  rise  in  the  world  did  not  burden 
themselves  with  wives  at  the  age  of  twenty ;  they  waited 
until  their  careers  were  safe — and  meantime,  if  they 
felt  the  need,  they  satisfied  their  passions  with  the 
daughters  of  the  poor.  And  it  was  for  some  such 
"eligible  man"  as  this  that  the  world  had  been  prepar 
ing  Corydon ;  it  was  to  save  her  for  his  coming  that 
her  sheltered  life  had  been  intended.  Her  beauty  and 
tenderness  would  appeal  to  him,  her  innocence  would 
bring  a  new  thrill  to  his  jaded  passions;  and  when  he 
offered  his  hand,  there  would  be  no  whisper  of  what 
his  past  might  have  been,  there  would  be  no  questions 
asked  as  to  any  vices  or  diseases  he  might  bring  with 
him.  There  would  be  trousseaus  and  flowers  and  wed- 


78  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ding-cake,  rice  and  white  ribbons  and  a  honeymoon- 
journey;  and  then  an  apartment  in  the  city,  or  per 
haps  even  a  whole  house,  with  a  butler  and  a  carriage 
— who  could  tell?  With  wealth  pouring  into  the  me 
tropolis  from  North  and  West  and  South,  such  things 
fell  often  to  beautiful  and  innocent  maidens  in  sheltered 
homes. 

And  here  was  this  one,  flinging  herself  away  upon 
a  penniless  poet  who  could  not  support  her,  and  did 
not  even  propose  to  try !  "Does  he  mean  to  get  some 
work?"  was  the  question ;  and  gently  Cory  don  explained 
that  they  intended  "to  live  as  brother  and  sister."  And 
that  capped  the  climax — that  proved  stark,  raving 
madness,  if  it  did  not  prove  downright  knavery  and 
fraud. 

In  the  end,  being  utterly  baffled  and  helpless  with 
dismay,  the  mothers  turned  upon  each  other;  for  to 
each  of  them,  the  virtues  of  her  own  offspring  being  so 
apparent,  it  was  clear  that  this  hideous  tragedy  must 
have  come  from  the  machinations  of  the  other.  One 
day  Thyrsis  and  his  mother,  walking  down  a  road,  met 
Corydon  and  her  mother,  upon  a  high  hill  where  the 
winds  blew  wildly ;  and  here  they  poured  out  their  grief, 
and  hurled  their  impeachments  against  the  storm.  To 
Thyrsis  they  assumed  heroic  proportions,  they  towered 
like  queens  of  tragedy ;  in  after-history  this  was  known 
as  the  Meeting  of  the  Mothers,  and  he  likened  it  to  the 
great  contest  in  the  Nibelungenlied  between  Brunhild 
and  Kriemhild. 

Then,  on  top  of  it  all,  there  came  another  calamity. 
In  the  boarding-house  with  Corydon  lived  some  elderly 
ladies,  who  had  a  remarkable  faculty  for  divining  the 
evil  deeds  of  other  people.  They  had  divined  the  evil 
deeds  of  Corydon  and  Thyrsis,  and  one  of  them  was 


THE    SNARE  79 

moved  to  come  to  Corydon's  mother  one  day,  and  warn 
her  lest  others  should  divine  them  too.  And  so  there 
was  more  agony ;  the  discovery  was  made  that  Corydon 
had  become  a  social  outcast  to  all  the  maids  and  matrons 
of  the  summer  population — a  girl  who  went  to  visit 
a  poet  in  his  lonely  cabin,  and  stayed  until  unknown 
hours  of  the  night.  And  so  there  came  to  Thyrsis  a 
note  saying  that  Corydon  must  come  no  more  to  the 
cabin ;  and  later  in  the  day  came  Corydon  herself,  to 
bring  the  tidings  that  a  telegram  had  come  from  the 
city,  and  that  she  and  her  mother  were  to  leave  the 
place  the  next  day. 

Thyrsis  was  aflame  with  anger,  and  was  for  going 
to  the  nearest  parson  and  having  the  matter  settled 
there  and  then.  But  Corydon  dissuaded  him  from  this. 

"I've  been  thinking  it  over,"  she  said,  "and  it's  best 
that  I  should  go.  You  must  finish  the  book — every 
thing  depends  upon  that,  and  you  know  that  if  I  came 
here  now  you  couldn't  do  it.  But  if  I  go  away,  there'll 
be  nothing  to  disturb  you.  I  can  study  meantime ;  and 
when  we  meet  in  the  city  in  the  fall,  everything  will  be 
clear  before  us." 

She  came  and  put  herself  in  his  arms.  "You  know, 
dear  heart,"  she  said,  "it  won't  be  easy  for  me  to  go. 
But  I'm  sure  it's  for  the  best !" 

And  Thyrsis  saw  that'  she  was  right,  and  so  they 
settled  it.  She  spent  that  day  with  him — their  last 
day ;  and  floods  of  tenderness  welled  up  in  their  hearts, 
and  the  tears  ran  down  their  cheeks.  It  was  only  now 
that  she  was  going  that  Thyrsis  realized  how  precious 
she  had  become  to  him,  and  what  a  miracle  of  gentle 
ness  and  trust  she  was. 

They  agreed  that  here,  and  not  in  the  village,  was  the 
place  for  their  parting.  So  they  poured  out  their 


80  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

love  and  devotion,  and  made  their  pledges  for  the  futur 
and  towards  sundown  he  kissed  her  good-bye,  and  pu 
her  in  the  boat,  and  stood  watching  until  it  was  a  mer 
speck  down  the  lake.     Then  he  went  back  to  the  house 
with  a  great  cavern  of  loneliness  in  his  soul. 

And  in  spite  of  all  resolves,  he  wras  up  with  the  daw 
next  day,  and  walking  to  the  village — he  must  see  h 
once  again!     He  went  to  the  depot  with  her,  and  upo 
the  platform  they  said  another  farewell ;  thereby  put 
ting  a  seal  upon  Corydon's  damnation  in  the  eyes  of  the 
maids   and  matrons   of  the   summer   population. 


19 
II 


BOOK   III 
THE  VICTIM  HESITATES 


They  had  opened  a  wooden  box  which  lay  beside 
them. 

"Ten  years!"  she  said.     "How  they  have  faded!" 

"And  the  creases  are  tight"  said  he;  "they  will  be 
hard  to  read." 

"Letters!  Utters!"  she  exclaimed — "some  of  them 
sixty  pages  long!  How  much  would  they  make?" 

"Perhaps   a   quarter  of   a   million  words,"   he  said. 

"What  Is  to  be  done  about  It?" 

"They  must  be  selected,  and  then  cut,  and  then 
trimmed  and  pruned" 

"And  will  that  leave  any  Idea  of  It?" 

He  answered  with  a  simile.  "You  wish  to  convey  to 
a  man  how  It  feels  to  pound  stone  for  twelve  hours  In 
the  sun.  The  only  way  you  could  really  do  It  would  be 
to  take  him  and  let  him  pound  for  twelve  hours.  But 
he  wouldn't  stand  for  that." 

"So  you  let  him  pound  for  one  Jwur,"  said  she,  with 
a  smile. 

"1  will  put  up  a  sign,"  he  said— 

'HERE  BEGINS  THE  STONE-POUNDING!' 

And  then  those  who  are  Interested  will  come  in  and  try 
it;  and  the  rest  wlll  peer  through  the  fence  and  pass  on." 
To  which  she  responded,  "I  would  make  the  sign  read, 
'ADMISSION   TO   LOVERS   ONLY  !'  " 


MY  THYRSIS! 

Oh,  if  I  might  only  stay  in  a  convent  until  you  are 
ready  to  take  me!  Since  I  left  you  I  find  myself  pos 
sessed  of  cravings,  which,  if  I  indulged  them,  might 
bring  me  the  fate  of  the  Maid  of  Neidpath ! 

Truly  I  have  known  some  miserable  moments.  But 
I  am  trying  very  hard  to  cultivate  a  happy,  confident 
activity.  The  people  here  are  aggressive,  and  I  am 
afraid  I  have  been  rude,  which  I  never  like  to  be.  I 
just  succeeded  in  getting  away  from  a  young  man  who 
wanted  to  walk  to  the  village  with  me.  Do  you  know, 
it  would  drive  me  absolutely  mad  to  talk  to  anyone 
now! 

My  soul  has  only  one  cry,  and  I  could  sometimes  go 
out  on  the  mountain-side  and  scream  it  aloud  to  the 
winds.  I  fear  I  shall  be  a  trifle  wild,  in  fact  utterly  in 
pieces,  until  you  come,  with  that  wonderful  recipe  of 
yours  for  binding  me  together,  and  making  me  com 
plete.  I  .think  of  you  in  your  house,  and  wish  to  God 
I  were  there,  or  out  in  the  desert  even,  if  you  were  with 
me. 

When  I  passed  through  the  city  I  felt  exactly  as 
if  I  were  in  Hades.  The  glaring  lights  and  the  fearful 
rattle,  the  lazy,  lounging  men — I  had  dinner  in  a 
restaurant,  in  which  all  the  people  seemed  to  be  feeding 
demons !  It  has  been  distinctly  shown  me  why  so  many 
people  have  thought  you  a  rude  unmannerly  boy!  I 

83 


84  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

don't  know  what  people  would  think,  if  I  had  to  be 
amongst  them  long. 

I  have  begun  so  many  letters  to  you  in  my  mind,  and 
oh,  the  times  I  have  told  myself  how  much  I  loved  you ! 
I  have  read  your  letters  and  slept  with  them  under  my 
pillow,  like  the  veriest  love-lorn  maiden.  But  all  my 
happy  thoughts  are  gone  at  present.  It  is  distracting 
to  me  to  have  to  come  into  such  close  contact  with 
people. 

Oh,  tell  me,  dearest  one,  what  I  shall  have  to  do  to 
control  myself  and  preserve  the  peace  of  my  soul,  until 
I  go  to  you  forever?  I  must  not  long  to  see  you,  it 
prevents  me  from  studying.  If  you  might  only  come 
to  me  at  one  moment  in  the  day,  and  give  me  one  kiss, 
and  then  go  away!,  You  see,  I  am  conducting  myself 
in  a  very  unwise  manner — and  it  is  necessary  I  should 
study!  I  should  love  to  have  an  indomitable  capacity 
for  work,  and  eat  only  two  meals  a  day,  and  never  have 
to  think  about  my  body. 

I  want  to  tell  you  what  I  feel,  how  utterly  and  ab 
solutely  I  am  yours,  and  how  any  image  that  comes 
between  you  and  me  enrages  me.  If  only  you  knew  how 
I  give  myself  up  to  you  in  thought,  word,  and  deed! — 
My  one  reason  for  acting  now,  is  that  I  may  show  you 
something  I  have  done,  my  one  thought  is  to  be  what 
you  would  wish  me.  No  one,  no  one  understands,  or 
ever  will,  what  is  in  your  heart  and  in  mine — to  be 
locked  there  for  ages.  There  I  have  placed  all  my 
power  of  love  and  religion  and  hope  of  the  life  that 
is  to  be.  To  you  I  give  all  my  trust,  all  my  worship, 
you  are  the  one  link  that  binds  me  to  myself  and  to 
God.  Without  you  I  feel  now  that  I  should  be  a  poor 
wanderer. 

You  give  me  my  feeling  of  wholeness,  of  the  possi- 


THE   VICTIM    HESITATES  85 

billty  of  completion,  that  I  never  had  before.  In  my 
best  and  truest  moments  I  know  that  with  you  I  can 
be  what  I  have  hoped.  With  you  before  my  eyes  I  have 
a  grim  resolution  to  conquer  or  die.  The  one  thing  I 
am  sure  of  always  is  my  love  for  you.  It  might  be 
possible  for  you  to  stop  loving  me;  but  I,  now  that  I 
have  begun,  shall  continue  to  love  you  to  the  day  I 
die — and  after,  I  hope.  I  do  not  love  you  for  what 
you  can  give  me,  I  love  you  because  you  are  you,  I 
must  love  you  now  no  matter  what  you  are.  I  believe 
Shakespeare  was  right  when  he  said  that  "love  is  not 
love  which  alters,  when  it  alteration  finds."  I  do  not 
believe  that  a  person  can  really  love  more  than  once. 

I   must   go   to   my   German    again    and   leave   you. 
Do  you  love  me?     Do  you  love  me?     Do  you  love  me? 


n 


MY  DEAREST  CORYDON: 

I  received  a  letter  from  you  before  dinner,  and  as 
usual  had  one  of  my  flights  of  emotion,  and  thought 
of  many  things  to  write  to  you.  Now  I  am  up  on  the 
mountain-side,  trying  to  recall  them.  Dearest,  you 
are,  as  always,  more  precious  to  me.  I  am  glad  to 
see  that  you  are  suffering  some,  and  I  think  that  it  is 
well  that  you  have  to  be  away  from  me  for  awhile,  to 
fight  some  of  your  own  soul's  battles.  You  see  that 
I  am  in  my  stern  humor ;  as  convinced  as  ever  that 
the  soul  is  to  be  deepened  only  by  effort,  and  that  the 
great  glory  of  life  cannot  be  bought  or  stolen,  or  even 
given  for  love,  but  must  be  earned. 

I  will  tell  you  what  I  have  been  doing  since  you  left. 
I  spent  three  whole  days  in  the  most  unimaginable 

' 


86  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

wretchedness ;  I  had  no  hindrances  like  yours — only  the 
most  fearful  burden  of  dullness  and  sloth,  that  had 
crept  upon  me  and  mastered  me,  during  all  the  weeks 
that  I  had  let  myself  be  so  upset  and  delayed.  I  can 
not  picture  what  I 'go  through  when  I  lose  my  self- 
command  in  that  way,  but  it  is  like  one  who  is  tied  down 
upon  a  railroad  track  and  hears  a  train  coming.  He 
gets  just  as  desperate  as  he  pleases,  and  suffers  any 
thing  you  can  imagine — but  he  does  not  get  free.  And 
always  the  book  would  be  hanging  before  me,  a  kind 
of  external  conscience,  to  show  me  what  I  ought  to  have 
been. 

Now  I  have  gotten  myself  out  of  that,  by  an  effort 
that  has  quite  worn  me  out.  When  I  found  myself  at 
work  again,  I  felt  a  kind  of  savage  joy  of  effort,  a 
greater  power  than  I  ever  knew  before.  In  the  reck 
less  mood  that  I  had  got  to,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could 
keep  so  forever. 

Now  dearest,  you  must  get  the  same  unity  in  your 
life ;  you  must  concentrate  all  your  faculties  upon  that 
— get  for  yourself  that  precious  habit  of  being  "instant 
in  prayer",  and  "strenuous  for  the  bright  rewrard". 
As  Wordsworth  has  it,  "Brook  no  continuance  of  weak- 
mindedness  !"  Let  it  come  to  you  with  a  pang  that 
hurts  you,  that  for  one  minute  you  have  been  idle,  that 
you  have  admitted  to  yourself  that  life  is  a  thing  of 
no  consequence,  and  that  you  do  not  care  for  it.  I 
shall  have  to  talk  to  you  that  way — perhaps  not  so 
often  as  I  do  to  myself,  because  I  do  not  think  .you  are 
really  in  your  heart  such  a  very  dull  and  sodden  creature 
as  I  am. 

I  think  the  greatest  trial  we  shall  have  will  be  our 
fondness  for  each  other,  and  the  possibility  of  being 
satisfied  simply  to  hold  each  other  in  our  arms.  But 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  87 

we  shall  get  the  better  of  that,  as  of  everything  else; 
and  that  is  not  the  problem  now.  You  must  learn  to 
strive,  learn  to  master  yourself;  you  must  prove  your 
power  so.  Do  not  care  how  rude  you  have  to  be  to  those 
people;  look  upon  the  things  about  you  as  a  kind  of 
dream-world,  and  know  that  your  own  soul's  life  is  the 
one  real  thing  for  you.  And  don't  write  any  more 
about  how  circumstances  hold  you  back.  When  you 
have  got  to  work  you  will  know  that  you  are  given  your 
soul  for  no  purpose  but  to  fight  circumstances ;  that 
they  are  the  things  to  make  you  fight.  When  they  are 
removed,  as  I  know  to  my  cost,  there  is  still  the  same 
necessity  of  fighting;  only  it  is  like  a  horse  who  has 
to  win  a  race  without  the  spurs. 

You  must  talk  to  yourself  about  this,  night  and 
day,  until  this  desire  is  so  awake  in  you  that  you  can't 
go  idle  many  moments  without  its  rushing  into  your 
mind,  and  giving  you  a  kind  of  electric  shock.  And 
when  that  happens  you  fling  aside  every  thing  else, 
every  idea  but  the  work  that  you  ought  to  be  doing, 
and  put  all  your  faculties  upon  that;  anol  every  time 
that  you  catch  them  wandering,  you  do  the  same  thing 
again,  and  again.  Some  times  when  I  become  very 
keenly  aware  of  myself,  and  of  what  a  shallow  creature 
I  really  am,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  only  by  wearing 
myself  out  in  that  grim  and  savage  way  that  I  can 
make  myself  even  tolerable. 

I  must  stop.  Do  you  know  that  for  five  precious 
hours  by  my  watch  I  have  sat  up  here  thinking  about 
you  and  writing  to  you?  Dear  me — and  I  am  tired, 
and  frozen,  for  there  is  a  cold  wind.  I  shall  have,  I  see, 
to  prove  some  of  my  powers,  by  not  writing  letters  to 
you  when  I  should  be  at  the  book. 

I  see  that  it  takes  four  or  five  days  for  letters  to 


88  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

come  and  go  between  us ;  and  so  if  we  write  often,  our 
letters  will  be  crossing.  Four  or  five  days  is  time  enough 
for  us  to  change  our  moods  a  dozen  times,  so  our  cor 
respondence  will  be  apt  to  be  complicated ! 


Ill 


MY  DEAREST  THYRSIS: 

It  has  worried  me  somewhat  to-day  that  you  might 
be  utterly  disappointed  in  the  letter  I  wrote  you.  It 
was  a  wild  jumble  of  words,  but  I  was  fighting  all 
sorts  of  uncomfortable  things  within  me.  To-day  I 
have  been  anything  but  despairing,  and  have  "gone 
at"  the  German.  In  fact,  I  quite  lost  myself  in  it,  and 
believe  I  understand  thoroughly  the  construction  of  the 
first  poem.  Wonderful  accomplishment ! 

Your  words,  as  I  read  them  again,  dear  heart,  are  full 
of  a  great  beauty  and  fire  and  energy,  and  I  only  hope 
you  may  keep  them  always.  I  believe  that  the  possi 
bility  of  the  marriage  we  both  desire,  depends  greatly 
if  not  entirely  on  your  sternness.  You  must  realize  it. 

I  cannot  tell  with  the  proper  conditions  and  training 
what  energy  I  might  be  able  to  accumulate  for  myself, 
but  in  the  meanwhile  the  thing  that  makes  me  most 
wretched  is  my  utter  incapacity  at  times,  and  my  in 
ability  to  share  with  you  your  work.  In  my  weaker  and 
more  helpless  moods,  I  ask  myself  with  a  pang,  whether 
I  ought  to  go  with  you  at  all,  when  I  cannot  help  you. 
But  I  must  stop  fuming.  I  have  come  out  of  my  mud- 
puddle  for  good  and  for  all,  and  that  is  the  main  con 
sideration.  I  don't  intend  to  go  back. 

We  must  not  think  of  each  other  in  any  way  but  as 
co-workers  in  a  great  labor ;  we  Kiust  simply  know  that 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  89 

our  love  is  rooted  deeply,  and  the  harder  we  work  the 
more  firm  it  will  be.  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should 
not  go  to  the  altar  with  just  this  sternness,  and  from 
now  on  preserve  this  attitude  until  the  day  when  we 
have  earned  the  right  to  consider  what  love  means.  Can 
you  do  it?  I  will  prove  to  you  that  I  can. 


IV 


MY  DEAR  THYRSIS: 

I  am  trying  very  dreadfully,  and  go  away  alone  and 
pound  at  the  German  as  if  my  life  depended  upon  it. 
I  go  to  bed  every  night  with  a  tight  feeling  in  my 
head,  but  I  do  not  mind,  as  I  take  it  for  a  guarantee 
that  I  have  not  rested. 

And  oh,  my  dearest,  dearest  and  best,  I  am  trying 
not  to  think  of  you  too  much — that  is  too  much  in  a 
way  that  does  not  help  me  to  study.  But  I  love  you 
really,  yes,  truly,  and  I  know  I  would  follow  you  any 
where.  I  am  not  particularly  joyful,  but  then  I  do  not 
expect  to  be  for  a  great  many  years. 


DEAR  THYRSIS: 

Only  a  few  words.  I  have  been  hovering  to-day  be 
tween  spurts  of  hopeful  energy,  and  the  most  indescrib 
able  despair.  It  positively  freezes  my  heart,  and  I  have 
been  on  the  point  of  writing  to  you  and  telling  you  to 
relieve  yourself  of  the  responsibility  of  me.  The  reason 
is  because  it  seems  a  perfectly  Herculean  task  to  read 
"Egmont".  I  have  to  look  up  words  in  the  dictionary 


90  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

until  I  am  absolutely  so  weary  I  care  not  about  any 
thing;  and  then  I  think  of  you,  and  what  you  are  able 
to  do,  and  at  one  word  from  you  I  would  give  up  all 
idea  of  marrying  you. 

I  tell  you  I  am  up  and  down  in  this  mood.  Great 
God,  I  could  work  all  day  and  all  night  if  I  could  do 
what  you  do,  but  to  strain  at  iron  fetters — a  snail ! 
Oh,  I  cannot  tell  you — I  simply  groan  under  it.  At 
such  times  I  have  no  more  idea  of  marrying  you  than 
of  journeying  to  the  moon.  I  repeat  to  you,  to  be 
constantly  choked  back,  while  you  are  rapidly  advan 
cing,  will  kill  me.  I  don't  know  what  you  will  say  to 
this,  but  it  is  intolerable,  unendurable,  to  me.  When  I 
think  of  your  ability  and  mine,  I  simply  laugh  about  it 
— Thyrsis,  it  is  simply  ridiculous.  I  do  not  ask  you 
to  take  me  with  you,  Thyrsis. 

Do  you  wonder  at  my  writing  all  this?  You  would 
not  if  you  understood.  It  is  so  hard  for  me  to  keep 
any  joy  in  my  heart,  and  I  get  tirejd  of  repeated  fail 
ures,  that  is  all.  I  thought  I  must  write  you  this,  and 
have  it  over  with.  This  is  the  style  of  letter  I  have 
always  torn  up,  but  this  time  it  goes.  I  think  I  will 
practice  the  piano  now,  and  try  to  get  some  gladness 
into  my  soul  again. 

VI 

MY  DE^R,   DEAR  THYRSIS: 

There  is  a  dreadful  sort  of  letter  which  I  wrote  you 
last  night  which  I  haven't  sent  you  yet. 

I  have  been  studying,  or  trying  to  most  of  the  day, 
and  my  mind  has  wandered  most  painfully.  There  were 
two  days  in  which  I  seemed  to  have  hold  of  myself,  but 
with  an  effort  that  was  a  fearful  strain.  I  must  try 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  91 

so,  that  it  almost  kills  me,  if  I  wish  to  accomplish  even 
a  little  of  what  I  ought.  The  heat  here  is  almost  in 
supportable,  it  is  stifling,  and  I  spent  an  hour  or  so 
in  the  water  this  afternoon. 

And  the  thought  is  always  torture  to  me — that  you 
are  accomplishing  so  much  more  than  I !  I  was  think 
ing  of  your  letters  to-night,  and  I  recalled  some  words 
that  seemed  to  speak  more  of  your  love  for  me.  Oh, 
Thyrsis,  if  your  letters  are  fiery  and  passionate,  is  it 
for  love  of  me  that  they  are?  I'm  almost  afraid  at 
times,  when  I  read  your  letters — when  you  tell  me  of 
the  kind  of  woman  you  want  to  love. 

I  at  present  am  certainly  not  she.  And  do  you  know 
that  when  we  are  married  we  shall  be  united  forever? 
I  don't  know  why  I  write  you  these  things,  they  are 
not  at  all  inspiring  thoughts  to  me. 

And  yet  I  was  able  to  go  in  swimming  this  afternoon, 
and  forget  everything  and  frolic  around  as  happily  as 
any  water-baby! 

VII 

MY  DEAR  CORYDON: 

I  came  off  to  write  my  poem,  but  I  have  been  thinking 
about  you,  and  I  must  write  a  long  letter.  It  is  one 
of  the  kind  that  you  do  not  like. 

In  the  first  place,  you  complain  of  the  contradictions 
in  my  letters.  I  am  sorry.  I  live  so,  struggling  always 
with  what  is  not  best  in  me,  and  continually  falling 
down.  Also,  in  this  matter  I  am  an  utter  stranger, 
groping  my  way ;  and  there  is  an  element  of  passion 
in  it,  a  dangerous  element,  which  leads  me  continually 
astray. 

I  can  only  say  that  in  my  ideal  of  love,  which  is  utter 


•92  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

love  and  spiritual  love,  I  think  of  living  my  life  with 
you  in  entire  nakedness  of  soul.  Therefore,  I  shall 
always  be  before  you  exactly  as  I  should  be  by  myself. 
And  I  shall  write  you  now  exactly  what  I  have  been 
thinking,  what  is  hard  and  unkind  in  it,  as  well  as  the 
rest.  You  will  learn  to  know  me  as  a  man  far  from 
perfect,  often  going  astray  himself,  often  feeling  wrong 
things,  often  leading  you  astray  and  making  you 
wretched.  But  behind  all  this  there  is  the  thing  often 
lost  sight  of,  but  always  present — the  iron  duty  that  I 
have,  and  the  force  in  me  which  drives  me  to  it. 

All  this  morning  I  have  been  thinking  of  my  book, 
losing  myself  in  it  and  filling  myself  with  its  glory. 
This  afternoon  I  fell  to  thinking  about  us ;  and  thoughts 
which  have  been  lurking  in  my  mind  for  a  long  time  got 
the  upper  hand  for  the  first  time.  They  were  that  I 
did  not  love  you  as  I  ought  to,  that  I  could  not ;  that 
the  love  which  I  felt  was  a  thing  from  my  own 
heart,  and  that  it  had  carried  me  away  because  I  was 
anxious  to  persuade  myself  I  had  found  my  ideal  upon 
earth;  that  you  could  not  satisfy  the  demands  upon 
life  that  I  made,  and  that  if  I  married  you  it  would 
be  to  make  you  wretched,  and  myself  as  well ;  that  you 
had  absolutely  nothing  of  the  things  that  I  needed,  and 
that  the  life  which  your  nature  required  was  entirely 
different  from  mine ;  that  you  had  no  realization  of  the 
madness  that  was  driving  me,  could  find  and  give  me 
none  of  the  power  I  needed;  and  that  I  ought  to  write 
and  tell  you  this,  no  matter  what  it  cost — that  I  owed 
it  to  the -sacred  possibility  of  my  own  soul,  to  live  alone 
if  I  could  live  better  alone.  And  when  I  had  said  these 
words,  I  felt  a  sense  of  relief,  because  they  were  haunt 
ing  me,  and  had  been  for  a  long  time. 

How  they  will  affect  you  I  cannot  tell,  it  depends  upon 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  93 

how  deep  your  love  for  me  is ;  certainly  they  mean  for 
me  that  my  love  is  not  deep,  that  you  have  not  made 
yourself  necessary  to  me.  I  think  that  in  that  last 
phrase  I  put  the  whole  matter  in  its  essence — you  have 
not  bound  yourself  to  me;  I  am  always  struggling 
to  keep  my  love  firm  and  right,  to  hold  myself  to  you. 
The  result  is  that  there  is  no  food  for  my  soul  in  the 
thought  of  our  love,  in  my  thought  of  you ;  and  there 
fore,  I  am  continually  dissatisfied  and  doubting,  con 
tinually  feeling  the  difference  between  the  love  I  have 
dreamed  and  our  love. 

I  tried  to  think  the  matter  out,  and  get  to  the  very 
bottom  of  it.  The  first  thing  that  came  to  me  on  the 
other  side  was  your  absolute  truth;  your  absolute  de 
votion  to  what  was  right  and  noble  in  our  ideal.  So 
that,  as  I  was  thinking,  I  suddenly  stopped  short  with 
this  statement — "If  you  cannot  find  right  love  with  that 
girl,  it  must  be  because  you  do  not  honor  love,  or  care 
for  it."  And  then  I  thought  of  your  helplessness,  of 
your  lack  of  training  and  opportunity  for  growth; 
and  I  told  myself  how  absurd  it  was  of  me  to  expect 
satisfying  love  from  you — when  all  that  I  knew  about 
in  life,  and  thought  of,  was  entirely  unknown  to  you. 
I  realized  that  I  was  a  man  who  had  tasted  more  or 
less  of  all  knowledge,  and  had  an  infinite  vision  of 
knowledge  yet  before  him,  and  an  infinite  hunger  for 
it ;  and  that  you  were  a  school-girl,  with  all  of  a 
school-girl's  tasks  on  your  hands.  So  I  said  to  myself 
that  the  reason  for  the  dissatisfaction  was  a  fault  of 
my  own,  that  it  had  come  from  my  own  blindness.  I 
had  gone  wrong  in  my  attitude  to  you ;  I  had  failed  in 
my  sternness  and  my  high  devotion  to  perfection ;  I  had 
contented  myself  with  lesser  things,  had  come  down  from 
my  best  self,  and  had  failed  to  make  you  see  what  a 


94  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

task  was  before  you,  if  you  ever  meant  to  know  my  best 
self.  You  perceive  that  this  is  a  return  to  my  old-time 
attitude;  I  am  sorry  if  it  makes  you  wretched,  but  I 
cannot  help  it.  It  is  a  surgical  operation  that  must 
be  borne.  I  shall  not  make  it  necessary  again,  I  hope. 

Now,  dear  Corydon,  I  am  not  trying  to  choose 
pleasant  words  in  this  letter,  this  is  the  way  I  talk 
to  myself.  And  if  anything  good  comes  from  our  love, 
it  will  be  because  of  this  letter.  I  challenge  what  is 
noblest  in  you  to  rise  to  meet  the  truth  of  it.  I  should 
not  care  to  write  to  you  if  I  did  not  feel  that  it  would. 

You  have  had  a  possibility  offered  to  you,  and  because 
you  are  very  hungry  for  life  you  have  clasped  it  to 
you,  placed  all  your  happiness  in  it.  The  possibility  is 
the  love  of  a  man  whose  heart  has  been  filled  with  the 
fire  of  genius.  There  are  few  men  whom  life  takes 
hold  of  as  it  does  me,  who  sacrifice  themselves  for  their 
duty  as  I  do,  who  demand  experience — knowledge, 
power,  beauty — as  I  do.  There  are  very  few  men  who 
will  wrest  out  of  existence  as  much  as  I  will,  or  know 
and  have  as  much  of  life.  I  am  a  boy  just  now,  and 
only  beginning  to  live ;  but  I  have  my  purpose  in  hand, 
and  I  know  that  if  I  am  given  health  and  life,  there 
is  nothing  that  men  have  known  that  I  shall  not  know, 
nothing  that  is  done  in  the  world  that  I  shall  not  do, 
or  try  to.  I  have  a  strong  physique,  and  I  labor  day 
and  night,  and  always  shall.  I  shall  always  be  hungry 
and  restless,  always  dissatisfied  with  myself,  and  with 
everything  about  me,  and  acting  and  feeling  most  of 
the  time  like  a  person  haunted  by  a  devil.  I  make  no 
apologies  to  you  for  the  conceit  of  what  I  am  saying; 
it  is  what  I  think  of  myself,  without  caring  what  other 
people  think.  I  know  that  I  have  a  tremendous  tempera 
ment,  tremendous  powers  hidden  within  me,  and  they 


THE    VICTIM    HESITATES  95 

have  got  to  come  out.     When  they  do,  the  world  will 
know  what  I  know  now. 

Now  Corydon,  as  you  understand,  I  dream  love  ab 
solute,  and  would  scorn  any  other  kind.  I  can  master 
my  passion,  if  it  be  that  upon  earth  there  is  no  woman 
willing  or  able  to  go  with  me  to  the  last  inch  of  my 
journey.  I  dream  a  life-companion  to  follow  wherever 
my  duty  drives  me;  to  feel  all  the  desperateness  of  de 
sire  that  I  feel,  to  be  stern  and  remorseless  as  I  must 
be,  wild  and  savage  as  I  must  be;  to  race  through 
knowledge  with  me  and  to  share  my  passion  for  truth 
with  me ;  a  woman  with  whom  I  need  have  no  shame  in 
the  duty  of  my  genius !  As  I  tell  you,  if  I  marry  you, 
I  expect  to  give  myself  to  you  as  your  own  heart ;  and 
then  I  think  of  the  gentle  and  mild  existence  you  have 
led! 

It  is  very  hard  for  me  even  to  tell  about  my  life,  or 
to  explain  this  thing  that  drives  me  mad.  But  I  am 
writing  this  letter  to  you  for  the  purpose  of  making 
clear  to  you  that  there  are  two  alternatives  before  you, 
and  that  you  must  choose  one  or  the  other  and  stick 
by  it,  and  bear  the  consequences.  It  is  painful  to  me 
to  think  that  I  have  fascinated  you  by  what  oppor 
tunities  I  have,  even  by  what  power  and  passion  and 
talents  I  have,  and  filled  you  with  a  hunger  for  me — 
when  really  you  do  not  realize  at  all  what  I  am,  or 
what  I  must  be,  and  when  what  I  have  to  do  will  terrify 
you.  I  write  in  the  thought  of  terrifying  you  now, 
and  making  you  give  up  this  red-hot  iron  that  you  are 
trying  to  hold  on  to;  or  else  to  show  you  my  life  so 
plainly  that  never  afterwards  can  you  blame  me,  or 
shrink  back  except  by  your  own  fault. 

You  must  not  blame  me  for  writing  these  words, 
for  wondering  if  a  woman,  if  any  woman  has  power 


96  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

to  stand  what  I  need  to  do.  And  when  I  talk  to  you 
about  giving  me  up,  you  must  not  think  that  is  cold, 
but  know  that  it  is  my  faithfulness  to  my  vision,  which 
is  the  one  thing  to  which  I  owe  any  duty  in  the  world. 
Nor  is  it  right  that  you  should  expect  to  be  essential 
to  me,  wrhen  I  have  labored  to  be  all  to  myself.  You 
could  become  necessary  to  me  in  the  years  to  come ;  if 
I  marry  you  to-day  I  shall  marry  you  for  what  you 
are  to  become,  and  for  that  alone — at  any  rate  if  I 
am  true  to  myself. 

If  you  are  to  be  my  wife  you  are  to  be  my  soul — 
to  live  my  soul's  life  and  bear  its  pain.  You  are  to 
understand  that  I  talk  to  you  as  I  talk  to  myself,  call 
you  the  names  I  call  myself,  and  if  you  cry,  give  you 
up  in  disgust ;  that  I  am  to  deny  you  all  pleasure  as  1 
do  myself,  and  what  God  knows  will  be  ten  thousand 
times  harder,  let  you  take  pleasure,  and  then  spring 
up  in  the  very  midst  of  it — you  know  what  I  mean ! 
That  I  am  to  be  ever  dissatisfied  with  you,  ever  incon 
siderate  of  your  feelings,  and  ever  declaring  that  you 
are  failing !  That  however  much  I  may  love  you,  I  am 
to  be  your  conscience,  and  therefore  keep  you — just 
about  as  you  are  now,  miserable !  You  told  me  that  you 
would  gladly  be  whipped  to  learn  to  live;  and  this  can 
be  the  only  thing  to  happen  to  you. 

You  must  understand  why  I  act  in  this  way.  I  am 
a  weak  and  struggling  man,  with  a  thousand  tempta 
tions ;  and  when  I  marry  you,  you  will  be  the  greatest 
temptation  of  all.  You  are  a  beautiful  girl,  and  I  love 
you,  and  every  instinct  of  my  nature  drives  me  to  you ; 
for  me  to  live  with  you  without  kissing  you  or  putting 
my  arms  about  you,  will  remain  always  difficult.  It  will 
be  so  for  you,  as  for  me,  and  it  will  always  be  our 
danger,  and  always  make  us  wretched.  Your  soul  rises 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  97 

in  you  as  I  write  this,  and  you  say  (as  you've  said 
before)  that  if  I  offered  to  kiss  you  after  it,  it  would 
be  an  insult.  But  only  wait  until  we  meet! 

This  is  the  one  thing  that  has  become  clear  to  me: 
just  as  soon  as  there  comes  the  least  thought  of  satis 
faction  in  our  love,  just  so  soon  does  it  cease  to  satisfy 
my  best  self.  You  cannot  satisfy  my  best  self,  you 
do  not  even  know  it ;  and  if  it  were  a  question  of  that,, 
I  should  never  dream  of  marrying  you !  I  love  you  for 
this  and  for  this  alone — because  you  are  an  undeveloped 
soul,  the  dream  of  whose  infinite  possibilities  is  my  one 
delight  in  the  matter.  I  think  that  you  are  perfect 
in  character,  that  you  are  truth  itself;  and  therefore, 
no  matter  how  helpless  you  may  be,  I  have  no  fear  of 
failing  to  make  you  "all  the  world  to  me",  provided  only 
that  I  am  not  false  to  my  ideal.  You  must  know  from 
what  I  have  written  before  that  I  can  love,  that  I 
know  what  love  is^.  and  that  you  may  trust  me. 
not  trying  to  degrade  passion — I  simply  see  how  pas 
sion  throws  the  burden  on  the  woman,  and  therefore  it 
is  utterly  a  crime  with  us — the  least  thought  of  it !  I 
ought  to  consider  you  as  a  school-girl,  really  just  that ;. 
and  instead  of  that  I  write  you  love  letters ! 

I  tell  you  there  is  nothing  more  hateful  for  me  to> 
look  back  upon  than  that  childish  business  of  ours, 
that  time  when  we  went  upstairs  that  we  might  kiss 
each  other  unseen.  I  tell  you,  it  revolts  my  soul,  from 
love  and  from  you!  I  should  be  perfectly  willing  to> 
take  all  the  blame — I  do ;  only  I  have  led  you  to  like 
that  (or  to  act  as  if  you  did)  and  I  must  stop  it.  Can 
you  not  understand  how  hateful  it  is  to  me  to  think  of 
making  you  anything  that  I  should  be  disgusted  with? 

I  expect  you  to  read  over  this  letter  until  you  realize 
that  it  is,  every  word  o;'  it,  completely  true  and  noble. 


98  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  until  you  can  write  me  so.  You  and  I  are  to  feel 
ourselves  two  school-children  and  live  just  so.  It  is 
not  usual  for  school-children  to  marry,  but  that  we  dare 
upon  the  strength  of  our  purpose,  and  in  defiance  of  all 
counsel,  and  of  every  precedent.  We  are  to  feel  that 
we  owe  our  duty  to  our  ideal;  and  that  simply  because 
of  the  strength  and  passion  of  our  love  for  each  other, 
we  demand  perfection,  each  of  the  other.  My  setting 

«      this  stern  challenge  before  you  is  nothing  but  my  de- 
...    ^termination  to  give  you  my  right  love,  to  demand  that 

*t    jrou  be  a  perfect  woman. 

I  promise  you  therefore  no  quarter ;  I  shall  make  no 

•>    sacrifice  of  my  ideal  for  your  sake.     As  I  wrote  you,  I 

*     mean  to  be  absolutely  one  with  you,  and  I  expect  you 

f  to  be  the  same.     You  shall  have  (if  you  wish  it)   all  of 

,  my  soul — I  shall  live  my  life  with  you  and  think  all  my 
.  thoughts  aloud — study  to  give  you  everything  that  I 
have.  And  God  only,  who  knows  my  heart,  knows  what 
litter  love  for  you  lies  in  those  words,  what  utter  trust 
of  you — how  I  think  of  you  as  being  purity  and  holi 
ness  itself.  To  offer  to  take  any  other  being  into  my 
soul,  to  lay  bare  all  the  secret  places  of  it  to  its  gaze, 
all  the  weaknesses  as  well  as  all  the  strength,  and  all 
that  is  vain  as  well  as  all  that  is  sacred !  You  cannot 
know  how  I  feel  about  my  heart,  but  this  you  may 
know,  that  no  one  else  has  had  a  glimpse  of  it,  you  are 
the  first  and  the  last ;  and  so  sure  am  I  of  you  that  I 
dare  to  say  it,  all  my  life  will  I  live  in  your  presence, 
and  trust  to  your  sympathy  and  truth — and  feel  that 
I  am  false  to  love  if  I  do  not.  If  there  were  anything 
in  my  heart  so  foul  that  I  feared  to  speak  of  it,  I  should 
give  you  that  first,  as  the  sacrifice  of  love;  or  any 
vanity  or  foible — such  things  are  really  hardest  to  have 
others  know,  so  great  is  our  conceit. 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  99 

If  I  could  talk  to  you  to-night,  I  should  do  just  as 
I  did  up  on  the  hill  in  the  moonlight — frighten  you, 
and  make  you  wonder  if  there  was  any  woman  who> 
wished  to  bear  such  a  burden ;  and  perhaps  the  saddest 
thing  of  all  to  me  is  that  I  do  not  bear  it — instead  I 
bear  the  gnawing  of  a  conscience  bitter  and  ashamed 
of  itself.  And  could  you  bear  that  burden  ?  For  Cory- 
don,  as  I  look  at  myself  to-night,  I  am  before  God, 
a  coward  and  a  dastard !  I  have  not  done  my  work ! 
I  have  not  borne  the  pain  He  calls  me  to  bear,  I  have 
not  wrested  out  the  strength  He  put  in  my  secret 
heart!  And  here  I  am  chattering,  talking  about  work 
to  you !  And  these  things  are  like  a  nightmare  to  me ; 
they  turn  all  my  life's  happiness  to  gall.  And  you  are 
taking  upon  yourself  this  same  burden — coming  to 
help  me  to  get  rid  of  it.  Or  if  you  do  not  wish  to,  for 
God's  sake,  and  mine,  and  yours,  don't  come  near  me — 
you  have  come  too  near  as  it  is !  Can  you  not  see 
that  when  I  am  face  to  face  with  these  fearful  things 
— and  you  come  and  ask  me  to  give  my  life  to  you,  to 
worship  you  with  the  best  faculties  I  possess — that  I 
have  no  right  to  say  yes? 

You  once  told  me  you  were  happy  because  I  called 
you  "mem  guter  Geist,  mein  bess'res  Ich" ;  well,  you 
are  not  in  the  least  that.  The  name  that  I  give  you, 
and  that  you  may  keep,  is  "the  beautiful  possibility  of" 
a  soul".  Remember  a  phrase  I  told  you  at  the  very 
beginning  of  our  love,  of  the  peril  of  "ceasing  to  love 
perfection  and  coming  to  love  a  woman."  And  read 
Shelley's  sad  note  to  "Epipsychidion" ! 


100  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

VIII 

DEAR  CORYDON: 

You  tell  me  in  your  last  letter  that  you  are  leaving 
all  who  love  you ;  and  you  ask  "How  do  you  know  that 
because  you  love  beauty,  you  will  love  me?" 

I  have  been  thinking  a  good  deal  about  this ;  I  do 
not  believe,  Cory  don,  that  a  man  more  haunted  by  the 
madness  of  desire  ever  lived  upon  earth  than  I.  And 
when  I  get  at  the  essence  of  myself,  I  do  not  believe 
that  I  am  a  kind  man;  I  think  that  a  person  with  less 
patience  for  human  hearts  never  existed,  perhaps  with 
less  feeling.  There  is  only  one  thing  in  the  world  that 
I  can  be  sure  of,  or  that  you  can,  my  fidelity  to  my 
ideal !  I  know  that  however  often  I  may  fail  or  weaken, 
however  many  mistakes  I  may  make,  my  hunger  for  the 
things  of  the  soul  will  never  leave  me,  and  that  night 
and  day  I  shall  work  for  them.  I  do  not  believe  I  have 
the  right  to  promise  you  anything  else,  I  have  no  right 
to  dream  of  anything  else ;  this  is  not  my  pleasure,  as  I 
feel  it,  it  is  a  frenzy,  it  is  that  to  which  some  blind  and 
nameless  and  merciless  impulse  drives  me.  And  I  may 
try  to  persuade  myself  all  my  life  that  I  love  you, 
Corydon,  and  nothing  else,  and  want  nothing  else ;  and 
all  the  time  in  the  depths  of  my  heart  I  hear  these  words 
from  my  conscience — "You  are  a  fool."  I  love  power, 
I  love  life,  and  seek  them  and  strive  for  them,  and  care 
for  nothing  else  and  never  have;  and  nothing  else  can 
satisfy  me.  And  I  cannot  give  any  other  love  than  this, 
any  other  promise. 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  101 

IX 

MY  DEAR  CORYDON  ! 

I  have  been  taking  a  walk  this  morning,  thinking 
about  us,  and  that  I  had  treated  you  fearfully.  The 
whole  truth  of  it  all  is  this — that  I  am  so  raw  and  so 
young  and  so  helpless  (and  you  are  as  much,  if  not  more 
so)  that  I  cannot,  to  save  my  life,  be  sure  if  my  love  for 
you  is  what  it  ought  to  be,  or  even  if  I  could  love  any 
one  as  I  ought.  And  I  am  so  wretchedly  dissatisfied  1 
Do  you  know  that  for  two  weeks  I  have  been  trying  to 
write  a  passage  of  my  book — and  before  God,  I  carwot! 
I  have  not  the  power,  I  have  not  the  life! 

Dear  Corydon,  it  comes  to  me  that  you  are  miserable 
to  be  in  love  with  me — that  I  had  no  right  to  put  this 
burden  on  your  shoulders.  I  would  say  better  things 
if  I  could,  but  I  think  that  our  marriage  will  be  a 
setting  out  across  a  wild  ocean  in  the  dark!  It  is  for 
you  to  be  the  heroine,  to  dare  the  voyage  if  you  choose. 
These  sound  like  wild  words,  but  they  are  the  truth 
of  my  life,  and  I  dare  not  say  any  others.  Can  a  girl 
who  has  been  brought  up  in  gentleness  and  sweetness, 
in  innocence  of  life  and  of  pain — can  she  say  things, 
feel  things  like  these? 


X 

THYRSIS  : 

•  God  did  not  endow  me  with  your  tongue,  or  else  it 
would  not  be  the  great  effort  it  is  to  me  to  tell  you  some 
of  the  thoughts  that  have  rushed  through  my  mind 
in  the  last  hour. 

It  is  an  hour  since  I  began  to  read  your  letter  of 
Horrible  Truth.     Now  it  seems  to  me  it  might  have 


102  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

been  in  the  last  year,  in  the  last  century.  Actually  I 
feel  like  a  stranger  to  myself ;  and  my  movements  are 
very  slow.  First,  I  will  tell  you  that  I  believe  in  God, 
oh,  so  implicitly — this  thought  gives  me  infinite  hope. 
I  long  to  let  you  know  as  much  of  my  heart  as  I  can, 
If  I  am  to  be  your  life-companion,  as  I  firmly  believe 
I  am  to  be.  I  have  such  a  strange  calmness  now,  and 
I  imagine  that  I  must  feel  very  much  the  way  Rip  Van 
Winkle  did  when  he  awoke.  I  want  to  try  to  show  you 
my  heart — it  is  right  that  I  should  try,  is  it  not? 

Know  that  I  have  placed  much  faith  and  trust  in 
you,  in  anything  that  you  did.  If  you  opened  one  door 
to  me  and  told  me  it  led  to  the  great  and  permanent 
truth,  I  believed  you  absolutely.  If  you  hauled  me 
back  and  put  me  through  an  opposite  one,  telling  me 
that  there  my  road  lay,  I  believed  you  with  equal  faith. 
Now,  now,  at  the  end  of  an  hour,  I  am,  through  you, 
convinced  of  one  door,  the  only  and  true  entrance;  and 
I  am  as  sure  as  I  am  that  the  sun  is  shining  at  this 
moment,  that  nothing  in  God's  world  can  ever  again 
make  me  lose  sight  of  it.  I  have  found  that  you  can 
lose  sight  of  it,  Thyrsis, — something  shows  me  that  I 
have  in  the  last  month  been  more  right  than  you.  Yes, 
I  have,  Thyrsis,  though  you  may  not  know  it.  And 
the  reason  I  couldn't  stay  right  was  because  I  am  not 
strong  enough  to  grasp  my  good  impulses,  and  keep 
hold  of  them :  because  I  have  not  enough  faith  in  the 
soul  within  me. 

I  will  try  to  tell  you  what  I  have  felt  since  reading 
your  letter.  All  is  so  disgustingly  calm  in  me  now. 
But  listen,  I  believe  I  have  had  a  little  glimpse  this 
afternoon  of  what  it  is  to  feel;  and  because  of  that 
knowledge  I  now  am  not  afraid  to  tell  you  that  I  claim 
something  of  God  and  life — that  I  can  get  it  if  you 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  10S 

can.  This  has  been  very  strong  in  me  at  moments,,, 
but,  as  I  tell  you,  I  have  not  yet  learned  to  hold  my 
glimpses  of  truth — they  seem  to  come  to  me,  and  as 
quickly  disappear. 

I  began  to  read  your  letter,  and  I  cannot  describe 
to  you  the  convulsion  that  came  over  me.  It  seemed 
that  I  had  the  feeling  of  an  empty  skull  on  se. 
desert ;  such  a  feeling — you  can  never  have  it !  All 
the  horror  and  despair !  I  tried  to  form  my  thoughts 
and  tell  myself  it  was  not  true.  I  tried  to  pray,  and  I 
did  pray — out  loud — and  asked  God  to  give  me  strength 
to  read  the  letter. 

I  tried  to  use  all  the  penetration  I  was  capable  of, 
to  find  out  one  thing,  whether  you  were  purely  and 
unreservedly  sincere  in  it.  I  wondered  whether  you 
really  wished  to  live  your  life  alone,  but  could  not  find 
the  courage  to  tell  me  so.  I  firmly  believe  that  no 
failure  in  the  future,  no  disgust  or  helplessness,  could 
ever  bring  me  the  complete  anguish  of  those  moments. 

Can  you  realize  what  such  a  thing  meant  to  me* 
Thyrsis? 

Last  spring,  I  had  succeeded  in  bringing  myself  into 
an  almost  complete  state  of  coma — I  saw  that  I  could 
do  nothing,  and  because  I  would  not  endure  such  profit 
less  pain  I  drugged  myself  to  sleep.  And  you,  you 
fiend,  waked  me  up ;  and  may  your  soul  be  thrice  cursed 
if  you  have  only  pulled  the  doll  to  pieces  to  see  what  it 
was  made  of!  Know,  you  that  have  a  soul  which 
says  it  lives  and  suffers — that  I  can't  go  to  sleep  again ! 
There  is  no  joy  for  me  in  mother  or  father,  in  friends 
or  admiration — I  can  tolerate  nothing  that  I  tolerated 
before  you  came  with  your  cursed  or  blessed  fire ! 

Also,  if  you  do  not  marry  me,  or  if  I  do  not  find  some 
man  who  has  your  strength  and  desire  for  life,  and 


104  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

who  will  take  me  and  help  me  to  learn,  I  shall  die  with 
out  having  lived. — And  I  cried  out  in  misery — only 
forty-two  years,  only  forty-two  little  years,  and  I  shall 
be  an  old  woman  of  sixty!  Only  forty-two  years  in 
which  to  learn  to  live ! 

I  believe  if  I  had  you  here  now  I  could  almost  strangle 
you.  We  may  kill  each  other  some  day.  I  sometimes 
feel  that  there  is  nothing  that  will  give  me  any  relief, 
that  I  cannot  breathe,  I  cannot  support  my  body.  But 
these  are  foolish  and  unprofitable  feelings — and  I  be 
lieve  I  will  yet  be  saved,  if  not  by  you,  perhaps  by 
myself.  I  think  some  heavenly  aid  came  to  me  to-day. 
I  asked  for  it,  I  simply  said  it  must  come — and  now  I 
am  able  to  bear  myself  and  look  around  me,  and  say 
that  the  secret  of  my  liberation  is  not  death  but  life. 

Please  realize,  Thyrsis,  that  I  know  you  do  not  need 
me,  that  I  cannot  either  entertain  you  or  help  you. 
My  dear,  do  you  not  know  that  I  have  been  conscious 
of  this  from  the  very  beginning — and  it  has  been  this 
thought  that  has  often  made  me  worry,  and  doubt,  and 
question.  And  then  I  have  told  myself  that  you  had 
found  something  in  me  to  love ;  and  that  I  also  was  very 
hungry  to  know  about  life  and  God;  and  that  if  you 
loved  me  enough  to  believe  I  was  not  dross,  we  might, 
with  our  untiring  devotion — well,  we  might  be  right 
in  going  with  each  other.  And  now — would  you  rather 
I  should  tell  you  I  will  not  marry  you,  be  my  desire, 
or  effort,  what  it  may?  I  do  not  know — even  though 
I  want  to  live  so  terribly.  I  have  no  word,  no  proof 
to  give! 

And  now,  Thyrsis,  I  have  no  more  strength  to  write. 
I  only  wish  I  had  some  power  to  make  you  know  what 
I  have  felt  this  afternoon — I  think  if  I  could,  you 


THE    VICTIM    HESITATES  105 

would  have  no  more  doubt  of  me.     And  I  believe  it  is 
my  God-given  right  not  to  doubt  myself. 

I  will  write  no  more — I  have  written  enough  to  make 
you  answer  one  of  two  things.  "Come  with  me,"  or, 
"I  would  rather  go  alone."  •[  know  which  one  it  will 
be,  even  new  in  my  wretchedness.  The  sky  is  so  blue 
this  evening,  and  everything  is  so  beautiful — and  I  am 
trying  so  hard  to  be  right,  to  feel  strong  and  confident ! 


XI 
DEAR  THYRSIS: 

I  have  just  arisen.  I  woke  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
and  there  was  a  spectre  sitting  by  my  bedside  to 
frighten  me ;  he  succeeded  at  first,  but  I  managed  finally 
to  get  rid  of  him,  and  to  find  some  peace.  Many  of 
your  sentences  came  to  me,  and  I  was  able  to  get  be^- 
hind  the  words,  and  I  saw  plainly  that  the  letters  were 
just  what  you  should  have  written,  and  that  they  could 
not  but  benefit  me.  They  have  accomplished  their  pur 
pose,  I  believe — they  are  burned  into  my  soul,  and  have 
placed  me  rightly  in  our  relation.  I  shall  simply  never 
trust  the  permission  you  may  give  me,  in  the  future, 
to  rest  or  be  satisfied.  I  shall  only  hate  you,  for  the 
pain  of  some  of  your  words  I  shall  never  forget. 

The  memory  of  the  first  two  pages  of  your  letter 
will  always  put  me  in  mortal  terror  of  you.  For  the 
rest,  I  am  very  grateful,  and  I  will  try  to  show  you 
how  I  love  your  ideal.  I  can  never  repay  you  as  long 
as  I  live  for  letting  me  come  with  you.  Oh  Thyrsis, 
I  am  sure  that  I  will  never  think  or  care  whether  you 
love  me  or  not,  if  only  I  may  go  with  you  and  learn 
how  to  strive! 

I  tore  up  all  your  love-letters  this  morning.     I  kept 


106  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  last  letter — though  I  do  not  think  I  could  bear  to 
read  it  over.  I  should  be  afraid  of  again  going 
through  with  that  despair.  Oh,  I  beg  for  the  time 
when  I  shall  be  obliged  to  wraste  none  of  my  minutes — 
and  when  I  shall  have  no -opportunity  of  writing  you! 
What  time  I  have  spent  over  your  letters  and  mine ! 


XII 
DEAR  THYRSIS: 

I  am  restlessly  waiting  for  the  supper-bell  to  ring, 
and  my  head  is  aching  intensely,  and  I  am  generally 
topsy-turvy.  Alas !  alas !  the  distance  that  separates 
us  and  our  understanding! 

I  received  a  letter  to-day  while  I  was  studying — but 
said  I  would  not  open  it  for  a  week,  that  I  wanted 
strength  to  study.  Well,  I  studied  all  the  afternoon 
and  found  it  none  too  easy.  When  I  came  home,  I 
thought  perhaps  it  was  better  to  read  your  letter,  which 
I  grimly  did. 

Do  you  know,  you  are  keeping  me  on  the  rack,  liter 
ally  on  the  rack,  and  my  flesh  and  blood  do  not  seem 
to  be  able  to  stand  it — my  body  seems  to  be  the  organ 
that  first  fails  me,  my  brain  is  never  so  tired  as  my 
body.  I  love  to  think  that  you  are  not  less  merciful 
to  me  than  you  would  be  to  yourself,  I  feel  that  you 
could  not  have  used  more  cruel  whips  to  yourself.  Do 
you  suppose  that  any  disgust,  scolding,  or  malediction 
to  me  could,  as  your  wife,  hurt  me,  as  your  doubt  of 
me  hurts  me  now? 

And  I  just  begin  to  read  your  letter  again,  and 
I  tell  you,  you  are  a  fool.  You  say  you  do  not  know 
whether  you  could  love  any  one  as  you  ought — well, 
I,  with  all  my  weakness,  know  whether  /  can  love,  and 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  107 

I  love  you  a  thousand  times  more  than  you  have  given 
me  cause  to.  And  you  are  so  hungry!  Will  you  always 
starve  because  you  are  blind?  As  to  being  satisfied, 
how  could  you  be?  But  you  say  you  will  love  me  as 
much  as  I  deserve.  How  much  do  I  deserve — do  you 
know?  I  sometimes  cry  out  against  you  and  long  to 
get  hold  of  you.  If  you  have  genius,  why  doesn't  it 
give  you  some  inkling  whether  you  are  a  man  with  a 
heart,  not  only  a  stupid  boy?  And  then  I  see  it  all 
plainly,  or  think  I  do,  and  know  that  you  are  trying 
so  hard  to  be  right  towards  us,  because  you  think  you 
love  me  the  way  other  people  love;  and  you  know  if  I 
am  weak,  it  would  degrade  your  genius ;  and  you  can 
not  be  sure  of  my  character  or  strength.  You  cannot 
know  whether  I  realize  the  life  I  am  selecting — you 
have  found  it  hard,  and  you  have  every  reason  to  think 
that  I  will  find  it  ten  times  harder ;  and  you  love  me  in 
a  way  that  is  not  the  highest, — but  yet  you  love  me 
enough,  thank  God,  to  tell  me  the  whole  truth! 

I  have  come  to  a  pass  where  I  can  say  to  myself  with 
truth,  that  I  do  not  care  how  much  or  how  little  you 
love  me.  That  depends  upon  you,  as  well  as  myself.  I 
believe  the  time  will  come,  when  you  will  love  me  as  you 
ought,  and  I  say  this  in  perfect  calm  conviction,  in 
all  my  weakness,  and  with  all  my  maudlin  habits  cling 
ing  to  me.  Strangely  enough  your  doubt  of  me  has 
made  me  rise  up  in  arms  to  champion  my  cause,  or  else 
I  should  lie  down  forever  in  the  dust,  and  deny  my 
God. 

I  wonder  whether  it  is  my  love  for  you  that  makes 
me  believe?  I  cling  to  you,  as  a  mother  might  cling 
to  her  child;  I  cling  to  you  as  the  embodiment,  the 
promise,  of  all  I  will  ever  find  true  in  life.  I  look  to 
live  in  you,  to  fulfil  all  my  possibilities  in  you,  and  if 


108  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

you  die  or  forsake  me,  all  my  hope  is  gone,  and  I  am 
dead.  This  is  a  letter  in  which  I  have  no  scorn  or  doubt, 
or  ridicule  of  myself,  as  formerly. 

And  then  you  ask  me,  "Can  a  girl  brought  up  in 
gentleness  and  sweetness,  and  innocence  of  life  and  of 
pain,  can  she  say  things,  feel  things  like  these?"  It  is 
the  gentleness  and  sweetness  and  innocence  that  are 
galling  to  me.  I  can  tolerate  no  more  of  them.  They 
have  warped  me,  they  have  given  me  no  chance.  But 
I  have  had  some  pain  in  my  life,  and  since  I  have 
known  you  I  have  known  more  about  pain  and  what  it 
brings,  and  leaves. — And  now  I  am  feeling  ill,  and  I 
cannot  control  that.  Oh,  God! 


XIII 

DEAREST  CORYDON: 

I  have  a  chance  to  finish  the  first  part  of  my  book 
to-day,  and  save  myself  from  Hades ;  and  here  I  am 
writing  to  you — just  a  line.  (Of  course  it  turned  out 
to  be  six  pages!) 

Your  last  letter  was  very  noble;  I  can  only  say  to 
you,  that  the  treatment  which  makes  you  upbraid  me 
is  not  done  for  my  sake;  that  the  life  which  I  live  is 
not  lived  for  my  sake.  You  say  perhaps  you  are  better 
than  I;  it  is  very  possible — I  often  think  so  myself; 
but  that  is  nothing  to  the  point.  I  should  be  very 
wretched  if  I  sat  down  to  think  what  I  am.  Oblige  me 
by  being  better  than  my  ideal — if  you  can !  You  must 
understand,  dearest,  that  behind  all  that  I  am  doing, 
there  is  truth  to  the  soul ;  and  that  truth  to  the  soul 
is  love,  and  the  only  love.  I  am  seeking  for  nothing 
but  the  privilege  of  treating  you  as  myself;  and  rest 
assured,  that  if  I  treat  you  any  differently  it  will  be 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  109 

better  than  I  treat  myself!  There  is  no  peril  in  our 
life  except  that! 

Some  day  you  will  understand  that  I  can  sometimes 
feel  about  myself  that  I  am  utterly  hateful,  utterly 
false,  utterly  shallow  and  bad;  and  that  to  get  away 
from  myself  would  be  all  that  I  desire  in  life.  I  cannot 
imagine  my  having  such  opinion  of  you ;  but  some  dis 
satisfaction — just  a  little — I  may  have.  Only  let  us 
love  perfection,  you  and  I,  with  all  our  souls,  and  I 
think  our  love  for  each  other  may  safely  be  allowed 
to  take  care  of  itself.  Remember  the  two  ships  in 
Clough's  poem,  which  parted,  but  sailed  by  the  compass, 
and  reached  the  same  port. 

I  shall  spend  no  more  time  comforting  you  about 
this. 

And  dear  Corydon,  when  you  are  angry  at  my  doubt 
ing  your  power,  and  say  that  I  do  not  know  you,  I  can 
only  reply — Why  of  course  I  don't,  and  neither  do  you. 
You  find  your  own  self  out  little  by  little — why  get 
angry  with  me  because  I  don't  know  it  until  you  tell 
me  ?  You  are  a  grown  woman  compared  to  what  you  were 
three  months  ago ;  and  this  character  that  you  ask  me 
to  know — well,  it  takes  years  of  hard  labor  to  prove 
a  character. 

XIV 

DEAREST  CORYDON: 

Do  you  ever  realize  how  much  faith  in  you  I  have? 
As  utterly  different  is  your  whole  life,  as  if  you  had 
been  in  another  world;  and  through  all  the  wilderness 
that  I  have  travelled,  I  hope  to  drag  you.  But  I  cannot 
carry  you,  or  take  you ;  I  must  trust  in  the  frenzy  of 
your  grip  upon  me.  There  is  nothing  else  you  could 
have  that  I  would  trust.  You  might  be  wonderfully 


110  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

clever  and  wonderfully  wise — and  I  could  do  nothing 
with  you.  Do  you  remember  Beethoven's  saying,  that 
he  would  like  to  take  a  certain  woman,  if  he  had  time, 
and  marry  her  and  break  her  heart,  so  that  she  might 
be  able  to  sing? 

Ah  dear  heart,  I  wish  you  could  read  in  my  words 
what  I  feel !  I  wonder  if  I  am  dreaming  when  I  live 
in  this  ideal  of  what  a  woman's  love  can  be — so  com 
plete  and  so  utter  a  surrender,  so  complete  a  forgetting, 
a  losing  of  the  self,  so  complete  a  living  in  another 
heart!  I  am  not  afraid  to  ask  just  this  from  a  woman 
— from  you !  For  I  have  enough  heart's  passion  to 
satisfy  every  thirst  that  you  may  feel.  Ah,  Corydon, 
I  want  you !  I  am  drunk  with  the  thought  of  making 
a  woman  to  love.  I  wonder  if  any  man  ever  thought  of 
that  before !  Artists  go  about  the  world  with  the  great 
hunger  of  their  hearts,  and  expecting  to  find  by  chance 
another  soul  like  the  one  they  have  spent  years  in  mak 
ing  beautiful  and  swift  and  strong ;  but  has  anyone  ever 
thought  that  instead  of  writing  books  that  no  one  un 
derstands,  he  might  be  making  another  kind  of  an  art 
work — one  that  would  be  alive,  and  with  sacred  possi 
bilities  of  its  own? 

XV 

DEAR  THYRSIS: 

Your  last  letters  have  been  very  beautiful.  I  see  one 
thing — though  you  inform  me  that  you  believe  you  are 
a  hard  man,  your  natural  gentleness  and  sympathy  of 
heart  would  be  the  ruin  of  both  of  us  in  the  future 
if  I  would  permit  it.  But  I  think  you  can  trust  me, 
not  ever  as  long  as  I  live  to  lead  you  into  weakness. 
My  desperateness,  before  I  received  your  letter  saying 
that  I  might  come  with  you,  was  rather  dreadful ;  it 


THE    VICTIM   HESITATES  111 

made  me  doubt  myself,  for  it  was  so  difficult  to  keep 
myself  from  going  to  pieces.  I  have  been  wicked 
enough,  to  wonder  whether  I  could  ever  make  you  feel 
as  I  felt  for  two  days — if  I  could  only  bring  to  your 
heart  that  one  pang,  the  only  real  one  I  ever  felt  in 
my  life!  But  it  taught  me  one  thing,  that  the  only 
road  toward  realization  of  life  and  one's  self  is  through 
suffering.  I  found  out  that  I  could  bear,  for  it  seems 
to  me  as  I  look  back  at  that  horrible  nightmare,  that 
it  was  almost  by  a  superhuman  effort  I  was  able  to  read 
the  letter  at  all.  But  enough  of  that ! 

I  think  I  have  effectually  cured  myself  of  any  weak 
yearning  for  your  love.  I  go  to  you  in  gratefulness, 
knowing  what  I  lack  and  what  you  need.  Anything 
my  love  can  do  for  you,  it  shall  do.  It  may  have  some 
power — I  sometimes  think  that  it  could  have  more  than 
you  realize. 

I  suppose  every  woman  has  thought  that  the  man 
she  loved  was  her  very  life,  but  I  do  not  think  it  of 
you,  I  simply  know  it.  I  must  go  with  you,  whether  I 
loved  you  or  not. 

Meanwhile  my  love  has  assumed  a  strength  to  me  that 
I  never  felt  before.  I  don't  know  how  my  wild  and  in 
coherent  letters  have  affected  you,  but  there  were  many 
times  when  I  longed  to  get  hold  of  you,  literally,  and 
simply  shake  into  you  some  recognition  of  my  soul. 
Oh,  I  am  afraid  you  couldn't  get  away  from  me ;  the 
more  merciless  you  are  to  me,  the  wilder  I  get. 

I  am  possessed  by  so  many  opposite  moods  and  in 
fluences.  I  am  afraid  of  you  a  little.  I  never  know 
what  you  are  going  to  do  to  me. 

I  feel,  I  cannot  help  but  feel,  that  I  am  part  of 
your  life,  now,  you  could  not  neglect  me  any  more 
than  you  could  your  own  soul.  I  consider  you  just 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

as  responsible  for  mine  as  you  are  for  your  own.  I 
say  this  with  no  doubts,  but  know  that  it  is  true,  and 
you  must  know  it. 

XVI 

DEAR  THYRSIS: 

You  certainly  have  a  wonderful  task  in  store  for  me, 
and  I  pray  God  to  give  me  strength  for  it.  I  can  see 
very  plainly  that  you  expect  to  find  the  essence  of  my 
soul  better  than  yours,  because  it  seems  that  you  are 
making  my  task  harder  than  yours. 

Do  you  know,  I  have  actually  found  myself  asking, 
at  times,  with  a  certain  defiant  rage — if  you  were 
actually  going  to  give  love  to  your  princess  before  you 
had  made  her  suffer!  So  far  you  have  not  made  her 
suffer  at  all.  I  had  become  quite  excited  over  this  idea 
— though  perhaps  I  had  no  right  to.  I  suppose  it  is 
all  right,  because  she  is  an  imaginary  person,  and  you 
can  endow  her  with  all  the  perfections  you  please.  She 
is  triumphant  and  thrilling,  and  worthy  of  love — 
whereas  I  am  just  little  Cory  don,  whom  you  have  known 
all  your  life,  and  who  is  stupid  and  helpless,  and  im 
possible  to  imagine  romances  about!  Is  that  the  way 
of  it? 

XVII 

MY  DEAREST  THYRSIS: 

A  long  letter  has  just  come  to  me.  I  always  receive 
your  letters  with  many  palpitations,  and  by  the  time  I 
get  through  reading,  my  cheeks  are  flaming.  It  is  too 
bad  it  takes  letters  so  long  to  go  to  and  fro. 

I  have  finally  come  to  bear  the  attitude  towards  my 
self,  that  I  would  to  a  naughty  child.  I  will  have  no 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  113 

nonsense,  and  all  my  absurdities  and  inefficiencies  must 
be  cured.  I  think  I  have  come  to  know  myself  a  little 
better  within  the  last  few  days.  I  know  that  I  have  no 
right  to  quick  victories,  or  any  happiness  at  all,  even 
your  love.  I  tell  you  truly,  if  it  were  only  possible, 
I  would  go  away  this  minute — do  you  hear? — oh!  to 
some  lonely  place,  and  then  I  would  do  something  with 
myself.  I  want  to  be  alone,  alone — I  want  to  be  face 
to  face  with  myself,  and  God,  if  possible !  I  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  I  can  do  anything  I  must  do. 
I  think  (I  am  not  sure)  I  could  give  you  up,  if  I  were 
obliged  to,  and  go  away  by  myself  and  try  alone.  If 
I  do  not  have  you,  I  must  have  solitude. 


XVIII 

MY  DEAREST  CORYDON  I 

Thinking  about  my  work  this  morning,  and  how  hard 
it  was,  and  how  much  strength  it  would  take,  my 
thoughts  turned  to  you,  and  I  discovered,  as  never  be 
fore,  just  how  I  like  to  think  of  you.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  you  were  part  of  the  raw  material  that  I  had  to 
use;  that  I  had  mastered  you,  and  was  going  to  make 
you  what  you  had  to  be.  And  there  woke  in  my  heart 
at  those  words  a  fierceness  of  purpose  that  I  had  never 
felt  in  my  life  before — I  was  quite  mad  with  it ;  and  you 
cried  out  to  escape  me,  but  I  would  not  let  you  go,  but 
held  you  right  tightly  in  my  arms.  And  so — I  do  not 
mean  to  let  you  go !  I  shall  bear  you  away  with  me, 
and  make  you  what  I  wish.  And  the  promise  of  mar 
riage  that  I  make  you  is  just  this:  not  that  I  love  you 
—I  do  not  love  you ;  but  what  I  wish  the  woman  to  be 
whom  I  am  to  love — that  I  will  make  you ! 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  do  not  ever  dare  to  ask  me  for  any  other  promise, 
for  you  will  not  get  it.     You  will  come  with  this. 


XIX 

MY  THYRSIS: 

I  had  an  iron  grip  at  my  heart  just  now,  as  I  was 
trying  to  study.  I  had  a  foreboding  of  something — 
and  then  I  came  home  and  found  your  letter  telling 
me  I  was  yours,  and  I  must.  At  last  I  may  go  to  you 
the  way  I  wish !  My  love,  my  love,  I  do  not  care  what 
you  are,  or  what  you  do  to  me,  as  long  as  I  may  go 
with  you. 

How  I  laugh  at  myself  as  I  say  it!  You  have  mas 
tered  me  to  worship  your  life — not  you.  I  shall  not 
work  for  your  love,  I  shall  work  to  live.  Our  love  will 
be  one  of  the  incidents  of  our  life.  Meanwhile,  I  may 
go  with  you,  that  is  all  that  I  say — I  sing  it.  I  may 
go  with  you,  not  to  happiness,  but  to  necessity! 

And  now  that  cursed  German!  It  hangs  over  my 
head  like  a  sword  of  Damocles  I  have  heard  of — though 
I  don't  know  why  it  was  held  over  his  head ! 

You  think  our  love  was  settling  into  the  cooing 
state !  Dear  me,  Thyrsis,  I  hope  I  will  not  always  have 
to  yell  to  you  over  a  foggy  ocean! 


XX 

DEAR  THYRSIS: 

Can  you  imagine  what  it  must  be  to  be  shut  up  in 
a  little  room  on  a  rainy  night,  with  the  children  and 
people  screaming  under  your  window?  That  is  my 
position  now. 

I  find  myself  hard  to  manage  at  times.     I  want  to 


THE   VICTIM    HESITATES  115 

become  discouraged  or  melancholy  or  disgusted,  but  I 
drive  myself  better  than  I  used  to.  I  even  was  happy 
a  little  for  a  few  moments  to-night.  I  was  playing  one 
of  my  piano-pieces,  and  I  found  myself  imagining  all 
sorts  of  things.  But  this  happens  very  seldom,  and 
only  lasts  for  a  moment.  I  often  wonder  at  myself. 
Two  months  ago  I  did  not  love  you  one  particle ;  I  love 
you  now,  so  that — so  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
do  anything  else.  In  fact  I  did  not  realize  how  much 
I  loved  you  until  that  terrible  moment  when  I  read  you 
did  not  love  me.  I  saw  how  impossible  it  will  be  to 
cease  to  love  you,  no  matter  what  you  do  to  me.  I  do 
not  know  why  it  is;  I  simply  know  it  is,  and  perhaps 
some  day  I  may  teach  you  how  to  love.  I  do  not  imagine 
you  know  how  very  well,  at  present — no,  Thyrsis,  I 
don't. 

I  know  your  true  self  now,  and  I  love  it  better  than 
ever  I  loved  the  other.  I  say  it  with  a  certain  grim- 
ness.  I  know  you,  your  real  self,  and  I  love  it. 

Know,  oh,  my  Beloved,  that  in  the  last  three  months 
you  have  grown  to  me  from  a  boy  into  a  man,  into 
my  husband !  When  I  think  of  you  as  you  were  at  first 
you  seem  a  child  compared  to  what  you  are  now. 


XXI 

DEAREST  LOVE: 

Last  night,  as  I  went  to  sleep,  I  was  thinking  of  you 
and  our  problem,  and  there  were  all  sorts  of  uncer 
tainties  ;  but  one  thing  I  have  to  tell  you,  my  Corydon 
— that  it  came  to  me  how  sweet  and  true,  and  how  pure 
and  good  you  have  been ;  and  I  loved  you  very,  very 
much  indeed.  I  thought :  I  should  like  to  tell  her  that, 
and  ask  her  always  to  be  so  noble  and  unselfish.  Can 


116  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

you  not  realize  how  all  your  deficiencies  are  as  nothing 
to  me,  in  the  sight  of  that  one  unapproachable  per 
fection?  For  my  Corydon  is  all  devotion  and  love,  and 
pure,  pure,  maiden  goodness!  And  there  is  quite  a 
whole  heart  full  of  feeling  for  you  in  that,  and  I  wish 
I  had  you  here  to  tell  you. 


XXII 

MY  CORYDON  : 

I  am  coming  more  and  more  to  realize  myself,  and 
what  is  the  single  faculty  I  have  been  given.  I  think 
of  a  dear  clergyman  friend  I  used  to  have,  and  I  realize 
what  a  loving  heart  is — what  it  is  to  delight  in  a  human 
soul  for  its  own  sake,  and  to  be  kind  to  it,  fond  of  ft. 
And  I  know  that  there  could  not  be  a  man  with  less 
of  that  than  I  have.  Certainly  I  know  this,  I  never 
did  love  a  soul  for  its  own  sake,  and  don't  think  I  could. 
I  love  beauty,  and  truth,  and,  power,  and  I  hate  every 
thing  else,  if  it  come  across  my  way.  If  I  had  to  live 
the  life  of  that  clergyman  friend  I  should  be  insane  in 
a  month.  I  see  this  as  something  very  hateful;  but 
there  is  only  one  thing  I  can  do,  to  see  that  I  hate  my 
own  self  more  than  I  hate  any  other  self — and  work, 
work,  for  the  thing  I  love. 

You  asked  me  once  to  tell  you  if  your  death  would 
make  any  difference  to  me.  If  you  were  to  die  to-mor 
row  I  should  feel  that  a  sacred  opportunity  was  gone 
out  of  my  life,  that  all  my  efforts  must  have  less  result 
forever  after.  But  I  do  not  think  I  should  stop  work 
ing  a  day. 

I  love  you  because  you  are  something  upon  which 
I  may  exert  the  force  of  my  will.  I  honestly  believe  that 
the  truest  word,  the  nearest  to  my  character,  I  ever 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  117 

spoke.  If  I  care  about  you  it  is  for  one  thing,  and 
one  only — because  you  are  a  soul  hungry  for  life,  be 
cause  you  are  capable  of  sacrifice  and  high  effort,  be 
cause  you  are  sensitive  and  eager.  I  love  you  and  honor 
you  for  this ;  I  take  you  to  my  bosom,  I  give  all  my  life 
to  your  service ;  and  I  shall  make  you  a  perfect  woman, 
or  else  kill  you. 

You  must  understand  what  I  want;  I  want  no  con 
crete  thing,  no  dozen  languages  to  throw  you  into 
despair.  I  want  effort,  effort,  effort !  That's  all.  And  I 
believe  that  you  might  be  a  stronger  soul  than  I  at 
this  moment,  if  only  you  chose  to  hunt  yourself  out 
and  fight!  That  is  truly  what  I  feel  about  you,  and 
that  is  why  I  love  you. 


XXIII 

DEAREST   THYRSIS: 

I  have  no  more  to  say,  my  precious  one;  I  bow  in 
joy  before  your  will,  your  certainty,  your  power.  Let 
it  be  so,  I  shall  adore  you  as  I  so  long  to  do. 

You  are  giving  me  all  I  could  ask  for.  What  more 
could  I  wish  from  you,  dear  Thyrsis,  than  to  know 
you  will  never  leave  my  side?  I  will  try  not  to  do 
any  more  bemoaning  of  my  shortcomings.  To-night 
I  reached  a  wonderful  security  and  almost  sublimity, 
until  I  could  have  fallen 'on  my  face  and  praised  God 
for  His  mercy.  I  talked  out  loud  to  myself,  I  ex 
horted  myself,  I  explained  to  myself  what  is  my  beauty 
and  possibility  in  life — the  reason  for  which  I  was 
born.  I  was  quite  lifted  out  of  myself,  by  a  conviction 
that  came  like  a  benediction,  that  the  essence  of  my 
soul  was  good  and  pure,  and  that  if  anybody  upon 
earth  had  the  power  to  reach  God,  it  was  myself. 


118  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Dear  God,  how  I  have  spent  the  years  of  my  life ! 
like  an  imbecile!  But  you — if  you  take  me,  I  shall  go 
mad — I  shall  love  you  like  a  tigress !  I  shall  implore 
you  to  invent  any  way  that  will  enable  me  to  realize 
life !  Oh,  if  you  take  me,  how  madly  I  shall  love  you ! 
I  fancy  myself  seeing  you  now,  and  I  don't  know  what 
I  should  do — I  love  you  so  dreadfully !  I  think  of  you, 
and  everything  about  you  seems  so  wondrously  beauti 
ful  to  me! 

I  almost  have  a  feeling  that  I  have  no  right  to  love 
you  so  much.  Oh,  tell  me,  do  you  want  me  to  love  you 
as  I  can  ?  Already  you  seem  part  of  me,  mine — mine ! 
And  it  is  wonderful  how  you  help  me. 


XXIV 

THYRSIS  : 

I  spent  the  whole  day  in  the  park  without  a  bite  to 
cat,  because  1  did  not  want  to  take  the  trouble  to  come 
home  after  it,  and  I  only  had  five  cents.  I  have  tried, 
oh,  tried  to  control  myself  and  make  myself  saner.  I 
am  seized  with  occasional  fits  of  the  horrors,  and  of  wild 
cravings  for  you,  until  I  could  scream.  It  is  so  un 
bearable,  and  I  almost  want  to  die.  Oh,  but  I  do  not 
want  to  die !  My  imagination  has  become  so  fevered  in 
the  last  few  days — if  I  do  not  see  you  soon,  I  know  not 
what  will  become  of  me! 

I  have  never  loved  you  so  wildly — though  I  have 
always  longed  for  you.  I  sometimes  feel  now  as  if  my 
brain  were  utterly  wrecked.  I  know  not  what  is  the 
matter ;  I  gasp,  when  I  think  of  you.  I  am  convinced 
of  heaven  and  hell  almost  in  the  same  breath — experi 
ence  each  in  rapid  succession.  One  touch  of  your  hand 
and  one  look,  I  think  would  cure  me.  I  seem  as  if  in 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  119 

a  thunder-storm — pitchy  blackness  with  flashes  of  light 
— and  in  the  flashes  I  see  you,  my  beloved ! 


XXV 

THYRSIS  : 

I  am  atrociously  weary  of  being  able  to  depend  upon 
myself  not  at  all;  but  oh,  how  marvellously  sweet  and 
good  you  are  to  me !  I  shall  never  be  able  to  pay  you 
for  your  help ! 

Dear  Heaven,  what  a  cup  of  bitterness  I  have  drunk, 
since  I  last  saw  you !  Dearest,  you  have  really  torn 
me  to  pieces,  unwittingly.  But  now  I  am  healed,  and 
I  may  go  on  in  your  blessed  sight,  with  my  terrors  gone 
forever. 

And  then  I  actually  wonder  if  you  have  an  earthly 
form!  It  will  be  very  strange  to  see  you  and  touch 
you,  I  sometimes  wake  up  with  a  start  at  the  thought 
of  it! 

XXVI 

THYRSIS  : 

Here  I  am,  the  most  restless  and  miserable  and  un 
comfortable  and  pining  of  creatures — a  very  Dido ! 
Are  you  satisfied,  now  that  you  have  made  it  almost  im 
possible  for  me  to  put  my  mind  on  anything  but  you, 
you?  I  spend  hours  reading  one  page  of  my  book. 

I  was  reading  peaceably  just  now,  and  I  suddenly 
thought  how  I  would  feel  if  I  saw  you  coming  in  at 
the  door.  I  started  and  could  hardly  believe  that  I 
will  really  see  you — in  something  besides  visions.  When 
night  comes  I  usually  get  fidgety,  and  can  hardly  realize 
I  do  not  need  to  worry  over  phantoms.  Then  I  go  on 
with  "Classicism  and  Romanticism  in  Music,"  and  I 


120  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

think  of  you — and  read  a  line  and  think  of  you !  You 
see,  it  doesn't  do  for  me  to  be  too  intense,  for  I  just 
devour  myself,  and  that  is  all.  My  only  idea  of  a  vent 
is  to  knock  my  head  against  something. 

I  suppose  it  is  the  inevitable  result  of  caring  for 
someone  you  cannot  see.  Here  I  might  be  studying 
now,  but  what  do  I  do?  I  go  around  seeking  rest — and 
I  write  you  a  dozen  times  a  day,  and  use  up  all  the 
stamps  in  the  house. 

Oh  well,  I  dare  say  if  you  wished  me  to  love  you, 
you  have  accomplished  your  purpose  most  ^successf ully. 
There  is  nothing  in  life  but  you,  and  to  suddenly 
acquire  a  new  self  is  most  startling,  and  something  hard 
to  believe.  Thyrsis,  I  simply  cannot  realize  that  I  may 
go  to  you  and  find  peace  and  security. 


XXVII 

MY  DEAREST  CORYDON: 

I  have  just  a  few  words  to  say.  I  have  two  weeks 
left  in  which  to  shake  off  my  shoulders  the  fearful 
animal  that  has  been  tearing  me.  For  just  three  weeks 
to-day,  not  a  line  written ! 

The  task  seems  almost  beyond  my  powers.  God, 
will  people  ever  know  how  I  have  worked  over  this  book ! 

But  unless  you  develop  some  new  doubt,  or  I  persist 
in  writing  letters,  I  ought  to  get  it  done  now.  I  shall 
see  you  as  soon  as  I  have  finished,  and  meantime  I  shall 
write  no  letters. 

XXVIII 
DEAR  THYRSIS: 

I  would  give  a  great  deal  to  let  you  know  how  I  have 
struggled  and  suffered. 


THE   VICTIM    HESITATES 

I  have  had  almost  more  than  I  could  bear — the  more 
horrible  because  the  more  unreasonable.  You  must 
know  it.  If  it  disturbs  you,  please  put  the  letter  away 
until  a  favorable  time.  I  account  my  trouble  greatly 
physical — I  have  never  been  in  such  a  nervous  state. 
The  murky  despair  that  has  come  over  me — that  I  have 
writhed  and  struggled  in,  as  in  the  clutches  of  some 
fiend !  It  seems  to  me  I  have  experienced  every  torment 
of  each  successive  stage  of  Dante's  Inferno.  I  know 
what  is  the  emotion  of  a  soul  in  all  the  bloom  and  hope 
of  youth,  condemned  to  die. 

I  woke  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night  last  night — and 
felt  as  if  a  monster  sat  by  to  throw  a  black  cloth  over 
me  and  smother  me.  I  got  up  and  shook  myself,  and 
my  heart  was  beating  violently. 

I  managed  to  get  myself  free.  This  morning  I  am 
better.  God  in  Heaven  only  knows — I  would  rather 
be  torn  limb  from  limb,  yes,  honestly,  than  endure  the 
blackness  of  soul  that  I  have  had  through  all  these 
years  of  strife  and  failure  by  myself. 


XXIX 

DEAREST   THYRSIS: 

Perhaps  if  I  have  written  to  you  a  few  words,  I  shall 
be  able  to  put  my  mind  on  study — as  so  far  I  have  not 
done.  I  actually  to-night  have  been  indulging  in  all 
sorts  of  romantic  moods  about  you.  I  felt  in  a  sing 
ing  mood,  and  when  I  came  up  from  dinner  I  put  on  a 
beautiful  dress,  just  for  fun,  and  I  looked  quite  radiant. 
I  dreamed  of  you,  and  imagined  that  you  were  at  my 
feet,  in  true  Romeo  fashion — and  I  was  your  Juliet. 
I  imagined — I  couldn't  help  thinking  of  this,  and  I 
knew  I  ought  to  be  doing  something  else!  Oh,  but  how 


122  LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

I  want  a  poor  taste  of  joy!  You  were  my  Romeo  to 
night — you  were  beautiful  and  young  and  loving;  and 
well,  I  had  one  dream  of  youth  and  happiness  before 
my  miseries  begin. 

I  have  felt  that  we  were  very  near  to  each  other 
lately.  You  have  shown  me  the  tenderness  of  your 
heart,  and  I  love  you  quite  rapturously.  I  love  your 
goodness,  your  sympathy — perhaps  when  I  see  you  I 
can  tell  you! 

XXX 

DEAREST   THYRSIS  : 

I  received  a  postal  just  now,  saying  that  you  were 
coming  soon.  I  had  my  usual  queer  faintness.  It  was 
like  receiving  word  from  the  dead — it  seemed  such 
centuries — aeons — since  I  heard  from  you !  I  send  you 
this  batch  of  notes  I  have  written  you  at  various  times, 
a  sort  of  mental  itinerary,  for  my  mind  has  traveled 
into  all  sorts  of  queer  places,  back  and  forth.  I  tell 
you  that  without  your  continual  influence,  I  am  lost 
in  doubt  and  uncertainty.  Please  try  to  understand 
these  notes  and  my  fits  of  love  and  fear. 


XXXI 

DEAR  THYRSIS: 

I  am  in  one  of  my  cast-iron  moods  this  morning — 
in  a  fighting  mood,  I  do  not  care  with  whom  or  what. 
You,  even  you,  have  not  altogether  understood  me — 
you  have  often  given  me  a  dog's  portion.  I  have  been 
a  slave,  a  cowering  kitten  before  you,  and  you  (un 
wittingly  I  know)  have  done  much  to  destroy  all  my 
courage  and  hope  and  love — by  what  you  call  making 
me  aware  of  your  higher  self.  Fortunately  I  know 


THE    VICTIM    HESITATES 

what  your  higher  self  is,  quite  as  well  as  you  do,  if 
not  a  little  better — and  I  know  that  it  is  the  self  that 
most  strengthens  my  love  and  courage,  the  self  that 
most  fills  me  with  life.  I  have  a  right  to  life  as  well 
as  you,  and  a  right  to  the  love  in  you  that  most  inspires 
me.  I  feel  I  am  capable  of  judging  this,  in  spite  of 
all  my  lack  of  education,  and  my  inability  to  follow 
you  in  your  intellectual  life. 

I  have  thought  lately  that  you  were  able  to  make 
yourself  believe  that  you  were  anything  you  wished  to 
think  yourself.  Whenever  you  wring  my  heart  and  de 
prive  me  of  strength,  I  shall  go  somewhere  alone,  and 
when  I  have  controlled  myself,  come  back  to  you. 

You  say  you  are  master — but  it  must  be  master  of 
the  right.  I  want  strength,  and  why  you  should  think 
it  right  ever  to  have  helped  to  throw  me  into  more 
despair,  I  do  not  know.  The  reason  I  have  written  all 
this  is  because  such  ideas  have  come  to  me  lately,  and 
a  fear  that  sometimes  you  might  resort  to  your  un 
loving  methods,  with  the  thought  of  its  being  right.  I 
tell  you  I  would  rather  stay  at  home,  than  ever  go 
through  with  some  of  the  pangs  you  have  cost  me,  in 
what  you  called  your  higher  moods.  You  must  not 
gainsay  me,  that  I  am  also  capable  of  respecting  high 
moods  and  bowing  before  them ;  but  it  would  seem  to 
me  that  they  are  only  high  if  they  are  a  source  of  in 
spiration  and  joy  to  me. 

Because  we  love  each  other,  would  that  be  any  reason 
why  we  must  dote  upon  each  other,  or  sink  from  our 
high  resolves?  I  cannot  see  why  our  love  for  each 
other  should  not  always  be  a  means  of  our  reaching  our 
higher  selves.  You  need  not  answer  this  letter — but 
when  you  come  back,  tell  me  whether  what  I  say  im 
presses  you  as  being  right  or  wrong — if  there  is  not 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

some  justification  in  it.      But  perhaps  I  should  wait. 
I  have  no   right  to  disturb  you  now. 


XXXII 

THYRSIS  : 

I  woke  up  this  morning  with  the  feeling  that  I  did 
not  love  you.  That  same  thing  has  happened  to  me 
two  or  three  times,  and  I  do  not  understand  it. 

It  must  be  because  at  the  present  moment  you  do  not 
love  me !  You  are  writing  your  book,  and  telling  your 
self  that  you  cannot  love  me  as  you  ought!  Is  this 
so?  It  is  only  a  surmise  on  my  part,  and  I  do  not 
know,  but  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  you  were.  I 
only  know  that  the  one  thing  that  can  bring  us  to 
gether  is  love,  and  I  do  not  love  you  now.  Perhaps 
you  can  explain  it  to  me.  I  write  this  absolutely  with 
out  emotion. 

I  tell  you  there  have  been  things  horribly  wrong 
about  you.  You  have  done  anything  but  inspire  love 
in  my  heart — you  have  never  seen  me  with  love  in  my 
heart.  Until  lately,  I  never  have  felt  any  love  for 
you ;  before,  I  simply  compelled  myself  to  think  I  loved 
you,  because  my  life  seemed  to  depend  upon  it.  There 
have  been  many  times  when,  as  I  look  back,  you  seem 
to  me  to  have  been  base. 

Well  may  you  preach,  while  you  are  alone,  and  are 
monarch  of  yourself.  I  shall  have  to  have  more  of 
a  chance  than  has  ever  come  to  me,  before  I  will  bear 
your  displeasure  or  your  exhortations.  If  you  come 
to  me  and  speak  to  me  of  the  high,  proud  self  that  I 
must  reach,  every  vestige  of  love  for  you  will  leave 
my  heart,  and  I  would  as  soon  marry  a  stone  pillar ! 

Great  Heaven,  what  strange  moods  I  have !    I  picture 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  125 

our  meeting  each  other,  unmoved  by  love;  you  de 
termined,  energetic,  indifferent  to  all  things,  myself 
included;  and  I  disappointed,  but  with  a  hardness  in 
my  heart — no  tears! 

I  am  indulging  now  in  the  most  lifeless  and  gloomy 
of  broodings ;  if  you  do  not  come  back  to  me,  the  only 
soul  I  can  love,  if  you  are  not  joyful  and  strong,  sin 
cere,  sympathetic,  and  loving,  all  of  these — I  shall  know 
it  is  a  farce  for  me  to  ever  hope  to  gain  any  life  with 
you.  I  do  not  believe  that  any  woman  can  grow  with 
out  love,  and  a  great  deal  of  it.  Why  do  you  sup 
pose  I  am  writing  all  this — I,  who  have  felt  such  deep 
and  true  love  for  you?  I  have  no  courage — the  damp 
ness  of  the  day  has  settled  into  my  soul — and  I  shall 
be  joyless  until  there  is  no  more  cursed  doubt  of  you 
and  your  love  for  me. 


XXXIII 

DEAR  CORYDON: 

Against  resolutions,  I  am  writing  to  you  again.  I 
thought  of  you — there  is  a  boat  up  the  lake  to-day 
with  some  hunters,  and  if  I  finish  this  letter,  I  can 
send  it  in  by  them  as  they  pass.  I  have  many  things 
to  tell  you,  and  you  must  think  about  them. 

This  is  one  of  my  paralyzing  letters.  It  will  reach 
you  Monday.  I  can't  tell  where  I  may  be  then.  I  have 
been  wrestling  with  the  end  of  the  book,  and  I  am  wild 
with  rage  at  my  impotence.  The  fact  has  come  to  me 
that  no  amount  of  will  is  enough,  because  all  my  life  is 
cowardly  and  false.  I  have  found  myself  wanting  to 
sneak  through  this  work,  and  come  home  and  cnjov 
myself;  and  you  can't  sneak  with  God,  and  that's  all. 

I  cannot  come  home  beaten,  and  so  here  I  am,  still 


126  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

struggling — and  with  snow  on  the  ground,  and  the 
shack  so  cold  that  I  sit  half  in  the  fire-place. 

I  think  of  you,  and  at  times  when  my  soul  is  afire,  I 
imagine  I  can  do  anything.  I  see  that  you  are  help 
less,  but  I  think  that  I  can  change  your  whole  being, 
and  make  you  what  I  wish.  But  then  that  feeling  dies 
out,  and  I  think  of  you  as  you  are.,  and  with  despair. 
I  do  not  allude  to  any  of  your  "deficiencies" — music, 
learning,  and  other  stuff.  I  mean  your  life-force,  or 
your  lack  of  it.  I  see  that  you  have  learned  nothing 
of  the  unspeakable,  unattainable  thing  for  which  I  am 
panting.  And  it  has  come  to  me  that  I  dare  not  marry 
you,  that  I  should  be  binding  my  life  to  ruin.  My  head 
is  surging  with  plans,  and  a  whole  infinity  of  future, 
and  I  simply  cannot  carry  any  woman  with  me  on  this 
journey. 

As  I  say  this,  I  see  the  tears  of  despair  in  your  eyes. 
I  can  only  tell  you  what  I  am — God  made  me  for  an 
artist,  not  a  lover!  I  have  not  deep  feelings — I  do 
not  care  for  human  suffering;  I  can  work,  that  is  all. 
Art  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  and  neither  am  I — I 
labor  for  something  which  is  not  of  self,  and  requires 
denial  of  self.  And  as  I  think  about  you,  the  feeling 
comes  to  me  that  it  is  not  this  you  want,  that  I  should 
make  you  utterly  wretched  if  I  married  you.  You  love 
love;  you  do  not  wish  to  fling  yourself  into  a  struggle 
such  as  my  life  must  be.  I  see  that  in  all  your  letters 
— your  terror  of  this  highest  self  of  mine.  If  you 
married  me,  you  would  have  to  fight  a  battle  that 
would  almost  kill  you.  You  would  have  to  wear  your 
heart  out,  night  and  day — you  would  have  to  lose 
yourself  and  your  feelings — fling  away  everything, 
and  live  in  self-contempt  and  effort.  You  would  have  to 
know  it — I  can't  help  it — that  I  love  life,  and  that  to 


THE    VICTIM   HESITATES 

human  hearts  I  owe  no  allegiance;  that  to  me  they  are 
simply  impatience  and  vexation. 

Do  you  want  such  a  life?     If  you  can  learn  to  love 

it  for  what  it  is — a  wild,  unnatural,  but  royal  life 

very  well.  If  you  are  coming  to  me  with  pleading 
eyes,  secretly  wishing  for  affection,  and  in  terror  of 
me  when  you  don't  get  it,  then  God  help  you,  that  is 
all! 

You  are  a  child,  and  you  can  not  dream  what  I  mean. 
But  every  day  I  learn  something  more  of  a  great  savage 
force  of  mine,  that  will  stand  out  against  the  rest  of 
this  world,  that  is  burning  me  up,  that  is  driving  me 
mad.  One  of  two  things  it  will  do  to  you — it  will  make 
you  the  same  kind  of  creature,  or  it  will  tear  the  soul 
out  of  you.  Do  you  understand  that?  And  nothing 
will  stop  it — it  cares  for  nothing  in  the  world  but  the 
utterance  of  itself !  And  if  you  wish  to  marry  me,  it  will 
be  with  no  promise  of  mine  save  to  wreak  it  upon  you ! 
To  take  you,  and  make  you  just  such  a  creature,  kill 
or  cure — nothing  else!  Not  one  instant's  patience — 
but  just  one  insistent,  frantic  demand  that  you  suc 
ceed — and  fiery,  writhing  disgust  with  you  when  you 
do  not  succeed — disgust  that  will  make  you  scream — 
and  make  you  live!  Do  you  understand  this — and  do 
you  get  any  idea  of  the  temper  behind  this?  And  how 
it  seems  to  you,  I  don't  know — it  is  the  only  kind  of 
truth  I  am  capable  of;  I  shall  simply  fling  naked  the 
force  of  my  passionate,  raging  will,  and  punish  you 
with  it  each  instant  of  your  life — until  you  understand 
it,  and  love  it,  and  worship  it,  as  I  do. 

Now,  I  don't  know  what  you  will  think  about  this 
letter — and  I  don't  care.  It  is  here — and  you  must 
take  it.  It  does  not  come  to  you  for  criticism,  any 
more  than  it  would  come  for  criticism  to  the  world.  It 


128  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

will  rule  the  world.  If  I  marry  you  I  must  live  all  my 
soul  before  you,  and  you  must  share  it;  if  you  think 
you  can  do  this  without  first  having  suffered,  having 
first  torn  loose  your  own  crushed  self,  you  are  mistaken. 
But  remember  this — I  shall  demand  from  you  just  as 
much  fire  as  I  give ;  you  may  say  you  cannot,  you  may 
weep  and  say  you  cannot — I  will  gnash  my  teeth  at 
you  and  say  you  must. 

Perhaps  I'm  a  fool  to  think  I  can  do  this.  At  any 
rate,  I  don't  want  to  do  anything  else;  I  am  a  fool  to 
think  of  doing  anything  else,  and  you  to  let  me. 

I  cannot  be  false  to  my  art  without  having  a  reac 
tion  of  disgust,  and  you  cannot  marry  me,  unless  you 
understand  that.  When  I  sat  down  to  this  letter  I 
called  myself  mad  for  trying  to  tie  my  life  to  yours. 
Now  I  am  interested  in  you  again.  You  may  wish  to 
make  this  cast  still ;  and  oh,  of  course  I  shall  drop 
back  as  usual,  and  you'll  be  happy,  and  I'll  be  your 
"Romeo" ! 

Ugh— how  I  hated  that  letter!  "Rorneo"  indeed! 
Wouldn't  we  have  a  fine  sentimental  time — you  with 
your  prettiest  dress  on,  and  I  holding  you  in  my  arms 
and  telling  you  how  much  I  loved  you ! 


XXXIV 

MY  DEAR  THYRSIS  : 

I  shall  be  your  wife.  This  thought  takes  hold  of  me 
firmly  and  calmly,  and  I  have  no  tears,  nor  fright,  nor 
uncertainty.  I  suffered,  of  course,  while  I  read  your 
letter,  and  my  self-control  toppled,  but  no  "tears  of 
despair"  came  into  my  eyes.  I  am  not  despairing— I 
shall  be  your  wife,  and  I  shall  feel  that  for  many  years 
one  of  my  greatest  efforts  will  be  to  prevent  you  from 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES 

becoming  my  "Romeo."  I  am  very  weak  and  human, 
and  you  become  that  easily — do  you  know  it  ? 

Rejoice,  I  have  gained  my  self-control,  and  well,  I 
am  going  to  be  your  wife.  Or  else  (it  comes  to  me 
quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  any  feeling  of  it 
being  unnatural  or  unusual)  I  shall  not  care  to  live. 
But  after  all,  I  do  not  fear  that  I  shall  die— I  shall  be 
your  wife.  You  may  even  gainsay  it,  you  may  even 
tell  me  I  shall  ruin  your  life,  you  may  even  tell  me 
that  you  refuse  to  take  me — but  sooner  or  later  I  shall 
be  your  wife.  I  say  it  with  perfect  certainty,  and 
almost  composure. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  at  such  a  time  as  this  I  can 
not  see  you — it  is  quite  cruelly  wicked.  There  is  so 
much  to  say,  not  all  in  your  favor  either.  Some  day  I 
shall  learn  to  bring  out  and  keep  before  me  that  higher 
self  of  yours,  which  now  I  do  not  fear.  I  also  have  a 
higher  self,  though  it  does  not  show  itself  very  often. 
It  is  a  self  which  can  meet  that  self  of  yours  with 
out  flinching,  but  which  loves  it,  and  stretches  out 
its  arms  to  it — which  knows  that  without  that  self  of 
yours  it  cannot,  will  not  live.  It  is  hard  to  realize  such 
a  thing,  but  I  beseech  you  no  longer,  I  am  going  with 
you.  You  see  now,  I  have  no  fear  of  your  not  taking 
me — I  simply  have  no  fear  of  this. 

If  I  had,  I  could  not  write  you  this  way.  But  you 
have  been  the  means  of  showing  me  I  can  awaken,  and 
that  I  was  not  meant  to  live  the  life  of  the  people 
around  me.  Chance  tried  hard  to  put  me  to  sleep  for 
ever,  but  you  have  roused  me.  Dear  me,  how  I  smile 
to  myself  at  my  confidence!  But  I  am  so  sure — this 
feeling  would  not  be  in  my  heart  if  it  had  no  meaning  1 
I  was  not  meant  for  this  life  I  am  leading.  I  am  not 
afraid  because  I  have  no  proof  that  I  am  a  genius,  and 


130  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

no  prospect  of  being  one  at  present.  I  do  not  know 
whether  what  you  have  must  come  as  an  inspiration 
direct  from  God,  I  do  not  know  whether  I  am  capable 
of  winning  any  of  this  life  that  you  are  seeking ;  but  I 
do  know  this — I'm  going  to  have  the  chance  to  try, 
and  you  are  going  to  give  it  to  me.  Do  you  suppose  I 
could  tell  you  that  I  am  willing  to  stay  at  home  and  let 
you  leave  me? 

I  have  not  even  any  fear  now  of  your  wishing  to  leave 
me.  Why,  I  wouldn't  hold  my  life  at  a  pennyworth 
if  you  were  out  of  it ! 

"You  are  my  only  means  of  breathing,  you  fool," 
I  thought.  I  sometimes  wonder  how  you  could  think 
of  leaving  me,  when  I  feel  as  I  do  at  present.  I  ask 
myself  why  it  is  that  you  know  nothing  of  it,  and  why 
it  does  not  make  you  put  out  your  hand  in  gladness  to 
me — how  you  could  write  me  that  all  my  letters  showed 
you  I  did  not  want  to  struggle  to  lead  your  life ! 

My  words  are  failing  me  now — this  is  probably  the 
reason  you  know  nothing  about  me. 

Besides,  when  I  have  written  you  before  this,  I  have 
been  worrying  and  doubting  and  afraid.  I  am  none 
of  these  now ;  and  I  do  not  believe  I  am  deluding  myself 
—in  fact  I  know  I  am  not.  7  shall  be  your  wife.  It  is 
indeed  a  pity  I  cannot  talk  to  you  now — yes,  a  very 
great  pity.  It  is  also  rather  incomprehensible,  that 
you  can  imagine  leaving  me  now.  And  all  my  letters 
have  told  you  that  I  wish  to  be  petted  and  cuddled,  did 
they?  If  you  were  here,  I  do  not  know  that  it  would 
do  any  good  to  give  my  feelings  vent,  it  would  profit 
me  nothing  to  strike  you,  and  what  could  I  do?  I 
cannot  hate  you — it  is  not  natural  that  one  should 
hate  one's  husband. 


THE  VICTIM  HESITATES  131 

Some  day,  oh,  some  day,  I  tell  myself — you  will  no 
longer  play  and  trifle  with  me  and  my  soul! 

Did  you  really  think  you  are  going  to  put  me  to 
sleep  again?  Surely  my  life  is  something;  and  you 
have  given  me  some  reason  for  its  existence.  I  can 
hardly  tell  you  what  I  wish  to  say;  people  run  in  and 
out,  and  I  am  bothered — I  suppose  this  is  one  of  my 
tasks.  But  do  you  not  see  that  you  have  taken  the 
responsibility  of  a  soul  into  your  hands  ?  I  cannot  live 
without  you.  What  is  it — do  creatures  go  around  the 
world  struggling  and  saying  they  must  live,  and  are 
they  only  pitiful  fools  for  trying? 

And  are  you  one  of  God's  chosen  ones?  Will  you  tell 
me,  "Corydon,  you  simply  cannot  live  my  life — you  are 
not  fit?"  Dear  Thyrsis,  I  actually  believe  that  if  you 
should  tell  me  that  now,  I  should  laugh  with  joy,  for  I 
would  see  that  I  had  gained  one  victory,  that  of  proving 
to  you  your  own  weakness  and  stupidity.  And  I  should 
not  let  you  discourage  me.  I  should  throw  my  arms 
around  your  neck,  and  cling  to  you  until  you  had 
promised  to  take  me.  After  all,  it  is  a  small  boon  to 
ask  the  privilege  of  trying  to  live,  it  cannot  but  be 
a  glory  to  you  to  help  me;  and  if  I  do  not  make  you 
waste  your  time  or  money,  how  can  I  hinder  you? 

Ask  yourself  how  you  have  treated  me — have  I  not 
suffered  a  little?  Though  I  may  have  been  miserably 
weak,  have  I  not  now  a  little  courage?  Why  do  the 
moments  blind  you  so,  that  you  can  speak  to  me  as 
though  I  were  a  sawdust  doll? 

There  is  only  one  thing  that  I  will  let  myself  do. 
I  know  that  you  are  strong  and  brave,  and  that  I  can 
be  if  I  go  with  you;  and  I  am  going  with  you — there 
simply  is  no  other  alternative — for  I  love  you!  Yes, 
dear,  I  saw  it  very  plainly  as  I  read  your  letter  to-day. 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

I  seem  to  feel  very  differently  about  it  all  now.  I  know 
we  cannot  sit  still  and  love  each  other — this  costs  me 
no  pang.  You  need  not  love  me  one  bit ;  I  may  simply 
belong  to  you,  we  may  simply  belong  to  each  other. 

I  see  how  I  fall  into  blindness  of  the  high  things 
at  home.  How  almost  impossible  it  is  for  me  to  do 
anything,  while  I  have  the  earthly  ties  of  love !  I  study 
— but  how?  How  is  it  possible  to  live  the  physical  life 
of  other  people — to  be  sympathetic  and  agreeable  and 
conciliatory,  and  gain  anything  for  your  own  soul? 
How  is  such  a  creature  as  myself  to  get  what  it  wants, 
unless  it  goes  away  where  there  are  no  contrary  and 
disturbing  influences — where  it  has  no  ties,  no  obliga 
tions?  The  souls  that  have  won,  how  did  they  do  it — 
did  they  go  alone,  or  did  they  stay  in  the  parlor  and 
serve  tea? 

Such  thoughts  as  these  would  make  me  grovel  at  your 
feet,  if  need  be,  in  an  agony  of  prayer.  The  means, 
I  cry — and  you  are  the  means !  What  is  there  for 
me,  then,  but  to  beseech  you  to  have  faith  in  me?  I 
suppose,  as  yet,  you  have  little  or  no  cause — though 
once  or  twice  I  have  risen  to  you,  even  though  perhaps 
you  did  not  know  it.  I  am  almost  happy  now — for 
I  feel  that  this  useless  strife  is  at  an  end,  this  craving 
and  wondering  if  you  wish  to  leave  me.  And  for  all 
that,  I  despise  you,  too — for  your  blind  and  wanton 
cruelty  in  wishing  to  crush  what  you  have  created! 
How  do  you  expect  God  to  value  your  soul,  when  you 
so  lightly  value  mine? 

But  after  all,  will  it  help  me  to  beseech  you?  The 
thing  I  honor  in  you  is  your  desire  to  be  right — and 
I  know  that  you  will  act  toward  me  as  your  sense  of 
right  prompts  you.  You  will  act  toward  me  as  you 
feel  you  must  do,  to  be  true.  Yes,  be  true  to  yourself, 


THE   VICTIM   HESITATES  133 

please;  I  am  happy  to  trust  in  yourself  so.  If  you 
believe  that  I  will  mar  your  life,  I  do  not  wish  to  go 
with  you.  I  do  not  know  why,  but  I  feel  that  something 
has  come  to  me  to  prevent  my  despair  from  returning; 
I  shall  take  care  of  my  soul — there  must  be  something 
for  me  in  this  life.  I  have  a  feeling  that  perhaps  you 
will  think  I  am  writing  this  last  mute  acceptance  of 
your  will,  without  knowing  what  I  am  doing.  But  I 
know  that  I  shall  struggle  without  you,  I  shall  not  die. 

And  I  wish  that  you  would  do  one  thing — see  me  as 
soon  as  you  can ;  let  it  be  early  in  the  morning,  and  it 
shall  be  decided  on  that  day  whether  I  am  to  marry  you 
or  not.  I  shall  leave  you,  not  to  see  you  again — or 
knowing  that  I  am  to  be  your  wife.  I  am  sick  unto 
death  of  fuming  and  sighing,  tears  and  fears. 

What  will  you  do,  Thyrsis?  I  cannot  write  any 
more. 

I  unfold  the  letter  again.  What,  m  the  name  of  God, 
are  you  going  to  do? 


BOOK  IV 
THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES 


A  silence  had  fallen  upon  them.  She  sat  watching 
where  the  light  of  the  sun  flickered  among  the  birches; 
and  he  had  the  book  in  his  hand,  and  was  turning  the 
pages  idly.  He  read — 

"7  know  these  slopes;  who  knows  them  if  not  I?" 
And  she  smiled,  and  quoted  in  return — 

"Here  earnest  thou  in  thy  jocund  youthful  time, 
Here  was  thine  height  of  strength,  thy  golden  prvnte! 
And  still  the  haunt  beloved  a  virtue  yields" 


§  1.  IT  was  early  one  November  afternoon,  in  his 
cabin  in  the  forest,  that  Thyrsis  wrote  the  last  of  his 
minstrel's  songs.  He  had  not  been  able  to  tell  when 
it  would  come  to  him,  so  he  had  made  no  preparations ; 
but  when  the  last  word  was  on  the  paper,  he  sprang  to 
his  feet,  and  strode  through  the  snow-clad  forest  to 
the  nearest  farm-house.  The  farmer  came  with  a 
wagon,  and  Thyrsis  bundled  all  his  belongings  into  his 
trunk,  and  took  the  night-train  for  the  city. 

He  came  like  a  young  god,  radiant  and  clothed  in 
glory.  All  the  creatures  of  his  dreams  were  awake 
within  him,  all  his  demons  and  his  muses ;  he  had  but 
to  call  them  and  they  answered.  There  was  a  sound 
of  trumpets  and  harps  in  his  soul  all  day ;  he  was  like  a 
man  half  walking,  half  running,  in  the  midst  of  a  great 
storm  of  wind. 

He  had  fought  the  good  fight,  and  he  had  conquered. 
The  world  was  at  his  feet,  and  he  had  no  longer  any 
fear  of  it.  The  jangling  of  the  street-cars  was  music 
to  him,  the  roar  and  rush  of  the  city  stirred  his  pulses 
— this  was  the  life  he  had  come  to  shape  to  his  will ! 

And  so  he  came  to  Corydon,  glorious  and  irresistible. 
His  mind  was  quite  made  up — he  would  take  her;  he 
was  master  now,  he  had  no  longer  any  doubts  or  fears. 
He  was  thrilled  all  through  him  with  the  thought  of 
her ;  how  wonderful  it  was  at  such  an  hour  to  have 
some  one  to  communicate  with — some  one  in  whose 

137 


138  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

features  he  could  see  a  reflection  of  his  own  exaltation ! 
He  recollected  the  words  of  the  old  German  poet — 

"Der  ist  selig  zu  begriissen 
Der  ein  treues  Herze  weiss !" 

He  went  to  Corydon's  home.  In  the  parlor  he  came 
upon  her  unannounced ;  and  she  started  and  stared  at 
him  as  at  a  ghost.  She  did  not  make  a  sound,  but  he 
saw  the  pallor  sweep  over  her  face,  he  saw  her  tremble 
and  sway.  She  was  like  a  reed  shaken  by  the  wind — 
so  fragile  and  so  sensitive!  He  got  a  sudden  sense  of 
the  storm  of  emotion  that  was  shaking  her ;  and  it 
frightened  him,  while  at  the  same  time  it  thrilled  him 
strangely. 

He  came  and  took  her  hands  in  his,  and  gently  touched 
her  cheek  with  his  lips.  She  stared  at  him  dumbly. 

"It's  all  right,  sweetheart,"  he  whispered.  "It's  all 
right."  And  she  closed  her  eyes,  and  it  seemed  as  if 
to  breathe  was  all  she  could  do. 

"Come,  dearest,"  he  said.     "Let  us  go  out." 

And  half  in  a  daze  she  put  on  her  hat  and  coat,  and 
they  went  out  on  the  street.  He  took  her  arm  to  steady 
her. 

"Well?"  she  asked. 

"It's  all  right,  dearest,"  he  said. 

"You  got  my  letter?" 

"Yes,  I  got  it.  And  it  was  a  wonderful  letter.  It 
couldn't  have  been  better." 

"Ah !" 

"And  there's  no  more  to  be  said.  There's  no  re 
fusing  such  a  challenge.  You  shall  come  with  me." 

"But  Thyrsis !    Do  you  want  me  to  come?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  want  you." 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  139 

And  he  felt  a  tremor  pass  through  her  arm.  He 
pressed  it  tightly  to  his  side.  "I  love  you!"  he  whis 
pered. 

"Ah  Thyrsis !"  she  exclaimed.  "How  you  have  tor 
tured  me!" 

"Hush,  dear !"  he  replied.  "Let's  not  think  of  that. 
It's  all  past  now.  We  are  going  011 !  You  have  proven 
your  grit.  You  are  wonderful!" 

They  went  into  the  park,  and  sat  upon  a  bench  in 
the  sun. 

"I've  finished  the  book!"  he  said.  "And  in  a  couple 
more  days  it'll  be  copied.  I've  a  letter  of  introduc 
tion  to  a  publisher,  and  he  wrote  me  he'd  read  it  at 
once." 

"It  seems  like  a  dream  to  me,"  she  whispered. 

"We  won't  have  to  wait  long  after  that,"  he  said. 
"Everything  will  be  clear  before  us." 

"And  what  will  you  do  in  the  meantime?"  she  asked. 

"Mother  wants  me  to  stay  with  her,"  he  said.  "I've 
only  got  ten  dollars  left.  But  I'll  get  some  from  the 
publisher." 

"Are  you  sure  you  can?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  Corydon  !"  he  cried,  "you've  no  idea  how  wonder 
ful  it  is — the  book,  I  mean.  You'll  be  amazed !  It  kept 
growing  on  me  all  the  time — I  got  new  visions  of  it. 
That  was  why  it  took  me  so  long.  I  didn't  dare  to 
appreciate  it,  while  I  was  doing  it — I  had  to  keep  my 
self  at  work,  you  know ;  but  now  that  it's  done,  I  can 
realize  it.  And  oh,  it's  a  book  the  world  will  heed !" 

"When  can  I  see  it,  Thyrsis?" 

"As  soon  as  it's  copied — the  manuscript  is  all  a 
scrawl.  But  you  know  the  minstrel's  song  at  the  end? 
My  Gethsemane,  I  called  it !  I  found  a  new  form  for 
it — it's  all  in  free  verse.  I  didn't  mean  it  to  be  that 


140  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

way,  but  it  just  wrote  itself;  it  broke  through  the  bars 
and  ran  away  with  me.  Oh,  it  marches  like  the 
thunder !" 

He  pulled  some  papers  from  his  coat-pocket.  "I 
was  going  over  it  on  the  train  this  morning,"  he  said. 
"Listen !" 

He  read  her  the  song,  thrilling  anew  with  the  joy 
of  its  effect  upon  her.  "Oh,  Thyrsis !"  she  cried,  in 
awe.  "That  is  marvellous !  Marvellous !  How  could 
you  do  it?" 

And  yet,  for  all  the  delight  she  expressed,  Thyrsis 
was  conscious  of  a  chill  of  disappointment,  of  a  doubt 
lurking  in  the  background  of  his  mind.  It  was  inevi 
table,  in  the  nature  of  things — how  could  the  book 
mean  to  any  human  creature  what  it  had  meant  to  him? 
Seven  long  months  he  had  toiled  with  it,  he  had  been 
through  the  agonies  of  a  child-birth  for  it.  And  an 
other  person  would  read  it  all  in  one  day !  — It  was  the 
old,  old  agony  of  the  artist,  who  can  communicate  so 
small  a  part  of  what  has  been  in  his  soul. 

§  2.  HE  wanted  to  talk  about  his  book,  but  Cory- 
don  wanted  to  talk  about  him.  She  had  waited  so  long, 
and  suffered  so  much — and  now  at  last  he  was  here! 
"Oh,  Thyrsis!"  she  cried.  "There's  just  no  use  in 
my  trying — I  can't  do  anything  at  all  without  you !" 

"You  won't  have  to  do  it  any  more,"  he  said.  "We 
shall  not  part  again." 

"And  you  are  sure  you  want  me?  You  have  no  more 
doubts?" 

"How  could  I  have  any  doubts — after  that  letter. 
Ah,  that  was  a  brave  letter,  Corydon !  It  made  me  think 
of  you  as  some  old  Viking's  daughter!  That  is  the 
way  to  go  at  the  task !" 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES 

"And  then  I  may  feel  certain!"  she  said. 

"You  may  stop  thinking  all  about  it,"  he  replied. 
"We'll  waste  no  more  of  our  time — we'll  put  it  aside 
and  get  to  work." 

They  spent  the  day  wandering  about  in  the  park 
and  talking  over  their  plans.  "I  suppose  it'll  be  all 
right  now  that  I'm  with  you,"  said  Thyrsis.  "I  mean, 
there's  no  great  hurry  about  getting  married." 

"Oh,  no !"  she  answered.  "We  dare  not  think  of  that, 
until  you  have  money." 

"How  I  wish  we  didn't  have  to  get  married!"  he  ex 
claimed. 

"Why?"  she  asked. 

"Because — why  should  we  have  to  get  anybody  else's 
permission  to  live  our  lives?  I've  thought  about  it  a 
good  deal,  and  it's  a  slave-custom,  and  it  makes  me 
ashamed  of  myself." 

"But  don't  you  believe  in  marriage,  dear?" 

"I  do,  and  I  don't.  I  believe  that  a  man  who  ex 
poses  a  woman  to  the  possibility  of  having  a  child, 
ought  to  guarantee  to  support  the  woman  for  a  time, 
and  to  support  the  child.  That's  obvious  enough — iio 
one  but  a  scoundrel  would  want  to  avoid  it.  But  mar 
riage  means  so  much  more  than  that!  You  bind  your 
self  to  stay  together,  whether  love  continues  or  whether 
it  stops ;  you  can't  part,  except  on  some  terms  that 
other  people  set  down.  You  have  to  make  all  sorts  of 
promises  you  don't  intend  to  keep,  and  to  go  through 
forms  you  don't  believe  in,  and  it  seems  to  me  a  cowardly 
thing  to  do." 

"But  what  else  can  one  do  ?"  asked  Corydon. 

"It's  quite  obvious  what  we  could  do.  We  don't 
intend  to  be  husband  and  wife;  and  so  we  could  simply 
go  away  and  go  on  with  our  work." 


142  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"But  think  of  our  parents,  Thyrsis !" 

"Yes,  I  know — I've  thought  of  them.  But  if  every 
one  thought  of  his  parents,  how  would  the  world  ever 
move?" 

"But,  'dearest!"  exclaimed  Corydon,  "if  we  didn't 
marry,  they'd  simply  go  out  of  their  senses!" 

"I  know.  But  then,  they  might  threaten  to  go  out 
of  their  senses  if  we  did  marry?  And  would  that  work 
also?" 

"We  must  be  sensible,"  said  the  girl.  "It  means  so 
much  to  them,  and  so  little  to  us." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so,"  he  answered.  "But  all  the 
same,  I  hate  it ;  when  you  once  begin  conforming,  you 
never  know  where  you'll  stop." 

"TFtf  shall  know,"  declared  the  other.  "Whatever  we 
may  have  to  do  to  get  married,  we  shall  both  of  us 
know  that  neither  would  ever  dream  of  wishing  to  hold 
the  other  for  a  moment  after  love  'had  ceased.  And 
that  is  the  essential  thing,  is  it  not?" 

"Yes,"  assented  Thyrsis.     "I  suppose  so." 

"Well,  then,  we'll  make  that  bargain  between  us; 
that  will  be  our  marriage." 

"That  suits  me  better,"  he  replied. 

She  thought  for  a  moment,  and  then  said,  with  a 
laugh,  "Let  us  have  a  little  ceremony  of  our  own." 

"Very  well,"  said  he. 

"Are  you  ready  for  it  now?"  she  inquired.  "Your 
mind  is  quite  made  up?" 

"Quite  made  up." 

She  looked  about  her,  to  make  sure  that  no  one  was 
in  sight ;  and  then  she  put  her  hand  in  his.  "I  have 
been  to  weddings,"  she  said.  "And  so  I  know  how  they 
do  it.  — I  take  thee,  Thyrsis,  to  be  the  companion  of 
my  soul.  I  give  myself  to  thee  freely,  for  the  sake  of 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  143 

love,  and  I  will  stay  so  long  as  thy  soul  is  better  with 
me  than  without.  But  if  ever  this  should  cease  to  be, 
I  will  leave  thee ;  for  if  my  soul  is  weaker  than  thine, 
I  have  no  right  to  be  thy  mate." 

She  paused.     "Is  that  right?"  she  asked. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "that  is  right." 

"Very  well  then,"  she  said;  "and  now,  you  say  it!" 

And  she  made  him  repeat  the  words — "I  take  thee, 
Corydon,  to  be  the  companion  of  my  soul.  I  give  my 
self  to  thee  freely,  for  the  sake  of  love,  and  I  will  stay 
so  long  as  thy  soul  is  better  with  me  than  without.  But 
if  ever  this  should  cease  to  be,  I  will  leave  thee ;  for 
if  my  soul  is  weaker  than  thine,  I  have  no  right  to  be 
thy  mate." 

"Now,"  she  exclaimed,  with  an  eager  laugh — "now 
we're  married!"  And  as  he  looked  he  caught  the  glint 
of  a  tear  in  her  eyes. 

§  3.  BUT  the  world  would  not  be  content  to  leave 
it  on  that  basis.  When  they  parted  that  afternoon, 
it  was  with  a  carefully-arranged  program  of  work — 
they  were  to  visit  each  other  on  alternate  days  and  go 
on  with  their  German  and  music.  But  in  less  than  a 
week  they  had  run  upon  an  obstruction ;  there  was  no 
quiet  room  for  them  at  Corydon's  save  her  bedroom, 
and  one  evening  when  Thyrsis  came,  she  made  the  an 
nouncement  that  they  could  no  longer  study  there. 

'.'Why  not?"  he  asked. 

"Well,"  explained  Corydon,  "they  say  the  maid  might 
think  it  wasn't  nice." 

She  had  expected  him  to  fly  into  a  rage,  but  he  only 
smiled  grimly.  "I  had  come  to  tell  you  the  same  sort 
of  thing,"  he  explained.  "It  seems  you  can't  visit  me 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

so  often,  and  you're  never  to  stay  after  ten  o'clock  at 
night." 

"Why  is  that?"  she  inquired. 

"It's  a  question  of  what  the  hall-boy  might  think," 
said  he. 

They  sat  gazing  at  each  other  in  silence.  "You  see," 
said  Thyrsis,  at  last,  "the  thing  is  impossible — we've 
got  to  go  and  get  married.  The  world  will  never  give 
us  any  peace  until  we  do." 

"Nobody  has  any  idea  of  what  we  mean !"  exclaimed 
Corydon. 

"No  idea  whatever,"  he  said.  "They've  nothing  in 
them  in  anyway  to  correspond  with  it.  You  talk  to  them 
about  souls,  and  they  haven't  any.  You  talk  to  them 
about  love,  and  they  think  you  mean  obscenity.  Every 
body  is  thinking  obscenity  about  us !" 

"Everybody  but  our  parents,"  put  in  Corydon. 

To  which  he  answered,  angrily,  "They  are  thinking 
of  what  the  others  are  thinking." 

But  everybody  seemed  to  have  to  think  something, 
and  that  was  the  aspect  of  the  matter  that  puzzled 
them  most.  Why  did  everybody  find  it  necessary  to 
be  thinking  about  it  at  all?  Why  did  everybody  con 
sider  it  his  business?  As  Thyrsis  phrased  it — "Why 
the  hell  can't  they  let  us  alone?" 

"We've  got  to  get  married,"  said  she.  "That's  the 
only  way  to  get  the  best  of  them." 

"But  is  that  really  getting  the  best  of  them?"  he  ob 
jected.  "Isn't  that  their  purpose — to  make  us  get 
married?" 

This  was  a  pregnant  question,  but  they  did  not  fol 
low  it  up  just  then.  They  went  on  to  the  practical 
problem  of  where  and  when  and  how  to  accomplish  their 
purpose. 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  145 

"We  can  go  to  a  court,"  said  he. 

"Oh,  no !"  she  exclaimed.  "We'd  have  to  meet  a  lot 
of  men,  and  I  couldn't  stand  it." 

"But  surely  you  don't  want  to  go  to  a  church!"  he 
said. 

"Couldn't  we  get  some  clergyman  to  marry  us 
quietly?" 

"But  then,  there's  a  lot  of  rigmarole!" 

"But  mightn't  he  leave  it  out?"  she  asked. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "They  generally  believe  in 
it,  you  see." 

He  decided  to  make  an  attempt,  however. 

"Let's  go  to-morrow  morning,"  he  said.  "I'm  going 
over  to  have  the  sound-post  set  in  my  violin,  and  that'll 
take  an  hour  or  so.  Perhaps  we  can  finish  it  up  in  the 
meantime." 

"A  good  idea,"  said  Corydon.  "It'll  give  me  to-night 
to  tell  mother  and  father." 

§  4.  So  behold  them,  the  next  morning,  emerging 
from  the  little  shop  of  the  violin-dealer,  and  seeking 
for  some  one  to  fasten  them  in  the  holy  bonds  of  mat 
rimony!  They  were  walking  down  a  great  avenue,  and 
there  were  many  churches — but  they  were  all  rich 
churches.  "I  never  thought  about  it  before,"  said 
Thyrsis.  "But  I  wonder  if  there  are  any  poor  churches 
in  the  city!" 

They  stopped  in  front  of  one  brown-stone  structure 
that  looked  a  trifle  less  elaborate.  "It  says  Presby 
terian,"  said  Corydon,  reading  the  sign.  "I  wonder 
how  they  do  it." 

"I  don't  know,"  said  he.  "But  he'd  want  a  lot  of 
money,  I'm  sure." 

"But  mightn't  he  have  a  curate,  or  something?" 


146  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Goose,"  laughed  Thyrsis,  "there  are  no  Presbyterian 
curates !" 

"Well,  you  know  what  I  mean,"  she  said — "an  as 
sistant,  or  an  apprentice,  or  something." 

"I  don't  know,"  said  he.     "Let's  go  and  ask." 

So,  with  much  trepidation,  they  rang  the  bell  of  the 
parsonage  on  the  side-street.  But  the  white-capped 
maid  who  answered  told  them  that  the  pastor  was  not 
r,i,  and  that  there  were  no  curates  or  apprentices  about. 

They  wrent  on. 

"How  much  do  you  suppose  they  charge,  anyway?" 
asked  Thyrsis. 

"I  don't  know — I  think  you  give  what  you  can  spare. 
How  much  money  have  you?" 

"I've  got  eight  dollars  to  my  name." 

"Have  you  got  it  with  you?" 

"Yes— all  of  it." 

"I  get  my  twenty-five  to-morrow,"  she  added. 

"Do  you  really  get  it?"  he  asked.  "You  can  depend 
on  it?" 

"Oh  yes — it  comes  the  middle  of  each  month." 

"I've  heard  of  people  getting  incomes  from  invest 
ments,  and  things  like  that,  but  it  always  seemed  hard 
to  believe.  I  never  thought  I'd  meet  with  it  in  my  own 
life." 

"It's  certainly  very  nice,"  said  Corydon. 

"Where  does  it  come  from?" 

"There's  a  trustee  of  the  estate  who  sends  it.  It's 
Mr.  Hammond." 

"That  bald-headed  man  I  met  once?" 

"Yes,  he's  the  one.  He's  quite  a  well-known  lawyer, 
and  they  say  I'm  fortunate  to  have  him." 

"I  see,"  said  Thyrsis.    "I'll  have  to  look  into  it  some 


THE   VICTIM  APPROACHES  147 

day.  You  know  you  have  to  endow  me  with  all  your 
worldly  goods !" 

They  went  on  down  the  avenue,  and  came  to  a  Jewish 
temple  with  a  gilded  dome.  "I  wonder  how  that  would 
do,"  said  Corydon. 

"I  don't  think  it  would  do  at  all,"  said  Thyrsis. 
"We'd  surely  have  to  believe  something  there." 

So  they  went  on  again.  And  on  a  corner,  as  they 
stopped  to  look  about  them,  a  strange  mood  came  sud 
denly  to  Thyrsis.  It  was  as  if  a  veil  was  rent  before 
him — as  if  a  bolt  of  lightning  had  flashed.  What  was 
he  going  to  do  ?  He  was  going  to  bind  himself  in  mar 
riage  !  He  was  going  to  be  trapped — he,  the  wild  thing, 
the  young  stag  of  the  forest ! 

"What  is  it?"  asked  Corydon,  seeing  him  standing 
motionless. 

"I — I  was  just  thinking,"  he  said. 

"What?" 

"I  was  afraid,  Corydon,  I  wondered  if  we  were  sure 
— if  we  realized " 

"If  we  realized!*9  she  cried. 

"You  know — it'll  be  forever " 

"Why,  Thyrsis!"  she  exclaimed,  in  horror. 

And  so  he  started,  and  laughed  uneasily.  "It  was 
just  a  queer  fancy  that  came  to  me,"  he  said. 

"But  how  could  you !"  she  cried. 

"Come,  dearest,"  he  said,  hurriedly — "it's  nothing. 
It  seems  so  strange,  that's  all." 

In  the  middle  of  the  block  they  came  to  another 
church.  "Unitarian !"  he  exclaimed.  "Oh,  maybe  that's 
just  the  thing!" 

And  so  they  went  in,  and  found  a  friendly  clergyman, 
Dr.  Hamilton  by  name,  to  whom  they  explained  their 
plight.  They  answered  his  questions — yes,  they  were 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

both  of  age,  and  they  had  told  their  parents.  Also, 
with  much  stammering1,  Thyrsis  explained  that  his 
worldly  goods  amounted  to  eight  dollars. 

"But — how  are  you  going  to  live?"  asked  Dr.  Hamil 
ton. 

Thyrsis  was  tempted  to  mention  the  masterpiece,  but 
he  decided  not  to.  "I'm  going  to  earn  money,"  hfe 
said. 

"Well,"  responded  the  other,  "I  suppose  it's  all 
right.  I'll  marry  you." 

And  so  the  sexton  was  called  in  for  a  witness,  and  the 
clergyman  stood  before  them  and  made  a  little  speech, 
and  said  a  prayer,  and  then  joined  their  hands  to 
gether  and  pronounced  the  spell.  The  two  trembled 
just  a  little,  but  answered  bravely,  "I  do,"  in  the  proper 
places,  and  then  it  was  over.  They  shook  hands  with 
the  doctor,  and  promised  to  come  hear  one  of  his  ser 
mons  ;  and  with  much  trepidation  they  paid  him  two 
dollars,  which  he  in  turn  paid  to  the  sexton.  And  then 
they  went  outside,  and  drew  a  great  breath  of  relief. 
"It  wasn't  half  as  bad  as  I  expected,"  the  bridegroom 
confessed. 

§  5.  THYRSIS  invested  in  a  newspaper,  and  as  they 
went  back  to  get  the  violin  they  read  the  advertise 
ments  of  furnished  rooms.  In  respectable  neighbor 
hoods  which  they  tried  they  found  that  the  prices  were 
impossible  for  them ;  but  at  last,  upon  the  edge  of  a 
tenement  district,  they  found  a  corner  flat-house,  with 
a  saloon  underneath,  where  there  were  two  tiny  bed 
rooms  for  rent  in  an  apartment.  The  woman,  who  was 
a  seamstress,  was  away  a  good  deal  in  the  day,  and 
Corydon  learned  with  delight  that  she  might  use  the 
piano  in  the  parlor.  The  rooms  were  the  smallest  they 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  149 

had  ever  seen,  but  they  were  clean,  and  the  price  was 
only  fifty  cents  a  day — a  dollar  and  a  half  a  week  for 
Thyrsis'  and  two  dollars  for  Corydon's,  because  there 
was  a  steam-radiator  in  it. 

There  was  a  racket  of  school-children  and  of  street 
cars  from  the  avenue  below,  bufc  they  judged  they  would 
get  used  to  this;  and  having  duly  satisfied  the  land 
lady  that  they  were  married,  and  having  ascertained 
that  she  had  no  objection  to  "light  housekeeping,"  they 
engaged  the  rooms  and  paid  a  week's  rent  in  advance. 

"That  leaves  us  two  and  a  half  to  start  life  on !"  said 
Thyrsis,  when  they  were  on  the  street  again.  "Our 
housekeeping  will  be  light  indeed !" 

They  walked  on,  and  sat  down  in  the  park  to  talk 
it  over. 

"It's  not  nearly  so  reckless  as  it  would  seem,"  he 
argued.  "For  I  have  to  earn  money  for  myself  any 
how.  And  then  there's  the  book." 

"When  will  you  hear  about  it?" 

"I  called  the  man  up  the  day  before  yesterday.  He 
said  they  were  reading  it." 

"Have  you  said  anything  to  him  about  money?" 

"Not  yet." 

"Will  they  pay  something  in  advance?" 

"They  will,  I  guess,  if  they  like  the  story.  I  don't 
know  very  much  about  the  business  end  of  it." 

"We  mustn't  let  them  take  advantage  of  us!"  ex 
claimed  Corydon. 

"No,  of  course  not.  But  I  hate  to  have  to  think 
about  the  money  side  of  it.  It's  a  cruel  thing  that  I 
have  to  sell  my  inspiration." 

"What  else  could  you  do?"  she  asked. 

"It's  something  I've  thought  a  great  deal  about," 
said  he.  "It  kept  forcing  itself  upon  me  all  the  time  I 


150  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

was  writing.  Here  I  am  with  my  vision — working  day 
and  night  to  make  something  beautiful  and  sacred, 
something  without  taint  of  self.  And  I  have  to  take  it  to 
business-men,  who  will  go  out  into  the  market-place  and 
sell  it  to  make  money !  It  will  come  into  competition 
with  thousands  of  other  books — and  the  publishers 
shouting  their  virtues  like  so  many  barkers  at  a  fair. 
I  can  hardly  bear  to  think  of  it;  I'd  truly  rather  live 
in  a  garret  all  my  days  than  see  it  happen.  I  don't 
want  the  treasures  of  my  soul  to  be  hawked  on  the 
streets." 

"But  how  else  could  people  get  them?"  asked  Cory- 
don. 

"I  would  like  to  have  a  publishing-house  of  my  own, 
and  to  print  my  books  with  good  paper  and  strong 
bindings  that  would  last,  and  then  sell  them  for  just 
what  they  cost.  So  the  whole  thing  would  be  con 
sistent,  and  I  could  tell  the  exact  truth  about  what  I 
wrote.  For  I  know  the  truth  about  my  work ;  I've 
no  vanities,  I'd  be  as  remorseless  a  critic  of  myself 
as  Shelley  was.  I'd  be  willing-  to  leave  it  to  time  for 
my  real  friends  to  find  me  out — I'd  give  up  the  de 
partment-store  public  to  the  authors  who  wanted  it. 
And  then,  too,  I  could  sell  my  books  cheaply,  so  that 
the  poor  could  get  them.  I  always  shudder  to  think 
that  the  people  who  most  need  what  I  write  will  have  it 
kept  away  from  them,  because  I  am  holding  it  back  to 
make  a  profit!" 

"We  must  do  that  some  day!"  declared  Corydon. 

"We  must  live  very  simply,"  he  said,  "so  we  can  be 
gin  it  soon.  Perhaps  we  can  do  it  with  the  money  we 
get  from  this  first  book.  We  could  get  everything  we 
need  for  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  save  the  bal- 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  151 

The  other  assented  to  this. 

"I've  got  the  prospectus  of  my  publishing-house  all 
written,"  Thyrsis  went  on.  "And  I've  several  other 
plans  worked  out — people  would  laugh  if  they  saw  them, 
I  guess.  But  before  I  get  through,  I'm  going  to  have 
a  reading-room  where  anyone  can  come  and  get  my 
books.  It'll  be  down  where  the  poor  people  are ;  and 
I'm  going  to  have  travelling  libraries,  so  as  to  reach 
people  in  the  country.  That  is  the  one  hope  for  better 
things,  as  I  see  it — we  must  get  ideas  to  the  people !" 

Thus  discoursing,  they  strolled  back  to  the  home  of 
Thyrsis'  mother,  and  he  went  in  to  get  his  belongings 
together.  Corydon  went  with  him ;  and  as  they  entered, 
the  mother  said,  "There's  an  express  package  for  you." 

So  Thyrsis  went  to  his  room,  and  saw  a  flat  package 
lying  on  the  bed.  He  stared  at  it,  startled,  and  then 
picked  it  up  and  read  the  label  upon  it.  "Why — 
why ! —  "  he  gasped ;  and  then  he  seized  a  pair  of  scissors 
and  cut  the  string  and  opened  it.  It  was  his  manu 
script  ! 

With  trembling  fingers  he  turned  it  over.  There  was 
a  letter  with  it,  and  he  snatched  it  up.  "We  regret,"  it 
read,  "that  we  cannot  make  you  an  offer  for  the  publi 
cation  of  your  book.  Thanking  you  for  the  privilege 
of  examining  it,  we  are  very  truly  yours."  And  that 
was  all! 

"They've  rejected  the  book!"  gasped  Thyrsis;  and 
the  two  stared  at  each  other  with  consternation  and 
horror  in  their  eyes. 

That  was  a  possibility  that  had  never  occurred  to 
Thyrsis  in  his  wildest  moment.  That  anyone  in  his 
senses  could  reject  that  book!  That  anyone  could  read 
a  single  chapter  of  it  and  not  see  what  it  was ! 

"They  only  had  it  five  days !"  he  exclaimed ;  and  in- 


152  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

stantly  an  explanation  flashed  across  his  mind.  "I 
don't  believe  they  read  it!"  he  cried.  "I  don't  be 
lieve  they  ever  looked  at  it!" 

But,  read  or  unread,  there  was  the  manuscript — re 
jected.  There  was  no  appeal  from  the  decision;  there 
was  no  explanation,  no  apology — they  had  simply  re 
jected  it!  It  was  like  a  blow  in  the  face  to  Thyrsis ; 
he  felt  like  a  woman  whose  love  is  spurned. 

"Oh  the  fools !     The  miserable  fools !"  he  cried. 

But  he  could  not  bring  much  comfort  to  his  soul 
by  that  method.  The  seriousness  of  it  remained.  The 
publishing-house  was  one  of  the  largest  and  most  pros 
perous  in  the  country ;  and  if  they  were  fools,  how  many 
more  fools  might  there  not  be  among  those  who  stood 
between  him  and  the  public  ?  And  if  so,  what  would  he 
do? 

§  6.  So  these  two  began  their  life  under  the  shadow 
of  a  cloud.  At  the  very  first  hour,  when  they  should 
have  been  all  rapture,  there  had  come  into  the  chamber 
of  their  hearts  this  grisly  spectre — that  was  to  haunt 
them  for  so  many  years ! 

But  they  clenched  their  hands  grimly,  and  put  the 
thought  aside,  and  moved  their  worldly  goods  to  the  two 
tiny  rooms.  When  they  had  got  their  trunks  in,  there 
was  no  place  to  sit  save  on  the  beds ;  and  though  Cory- 
don  had  cast  away  all  superfluities  for  this  pilgrimage, 
still  it  was  a  puzzle  to  know  where  to  put  things. 

But  what  of  that — they  were  together  at  last !  What 
an  ecstasy  it  was  to  be  actually  unpacking,  and  to  be 
mingling  their  effects  !  A  kind  of  symbol  it  was  of  their 
spiritual  union,  so  that  the  most  commonplace  things 
became  touched  with  meaning.  Thyrsis  thrilled  when 
the  other  brought  in  an  armful  of  books  to  him — all 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  155 

this  wealth  was  to  be  added  to  his  store !  He  owned  no 
books  himself,  save  a  few  text-books,  and  some  volumes 
of  poetry  that  he  knew  by  heart.  Other  books  he  had 
borrowed  all  his  life  from  libraries ;  and  he  often 
thought  with  wonder  that  there  were  people  who  would 
pay  a  dollar  or  two  for  a  book  which  they  did  not  mean 
to  read  but  once ! 

Also  there  were  a  hundred  trifles  which  came  from 
Corydon's  trunk,  and  which  whispered  of  the  intimacies 
of  her  life;  the  pictures  she  put  upon  her  bureau,  the 
sachet-bags  that  went  into  the  drawer,  the  clothing  she 
hung  behind  the  door.  It  disturbed  him  strangely  to 
realize  how  close  she  was  to  be  to  him  from  now  on. 

And  then,  the  excursion  to  the  corner-grocery,  and 
the  delight  of  the  plunge  into  housekeeping !  A  pound 
of  butter,  and  some  salt  and  pepper,  and  a  bunch  of 
celery ;  a  box  of  "chipped  beef",  and  a  dozen  eggs,  and 
a  quart  of  potatoes ;  and  then  to  the  baker's,  for  rolls 
and  sponge-cakes — did  ever  a  grocer  and  a  baker  sell 
such  ecstasies  before?  They  carried  it  all  home,  and 
while  Corydon  scrubbed  the  celery  in  the  bath-room, 
Thyrsis  got  out  his  chafing-dish  and  set  the  beef  and 
eggs  to  sizzling,  and  they  sat  and  sniffed  the  delicious 
odors,  and  meantime  munched  at  rolls  and  butter,  be 
cause  they  were  so  hungry  they  could  not  wait. 

What  an  Elysian  festivity  they  made  of  it!  And 
then  to  think  that  they  would  have  three  such  picnics 
every  day !  To  be  sure,  the  purchases  had  taken  one 
half  of  Thyrsis'  remaining  capital ;  but  then,  was  it 
not  just  that  spice  of  danger  that  gave  the  keen  edge 
to  their  delight?  What  was  it  that  made  the  sense  of 
snugness  and  intimacy  in  their  little  retreat,  save  the 
knowledge  of  a  cold  and  hostile  world  outside? 

The  next  morning  Thyrsis  took  his  manuscript  to 


154  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

another  publisher,  and  then  they  went  at  their  work. 
Corydon  laughed  aloud  with  delight  as  they  began  the 
German — for  what  were  all  its  terrors  now,  when  she 
had  Thyrsis  for  a  dictionary!  They  fairly  romped 
through  the  books.  In  the  weeks  that  followed  they 
read  "Werther"  and  "Wilhelm  Meister"  and  "Wahlver- 
wandschaf  ten" ;  they  read  "Undine"  and  "Peter  Schle- 
mil"  and  the  "Leben  eines  Taugenichts" ;  they  read 
Heine's  poems,  and  Auerbach's  and  Freitag's  novels, 
and  Wieland's  "Oberon" — is  there  anybody  in  Germany 
who  still  reads  Wieland's  "Oberon?"  Surely  there  must 
somewhere  be  young  couples  who  delight  in  "Der  Trom- 
peter  von  Sekkingen,"  and  laugh  with  delight  over  "der 
Kater  Hidigeigei !" 

Also  they  went  at  music.  Corydon  had  been  taught 
to  play  as  many  "pieces"  as  the  average  American 
young  lady;  but  Thyrsis  had  tried  to  persuade  her  to 
a  new  and  desperate  emprise — he  insisted  that  there  was 
nothing  to  music  until  one  had  learned  to  read  it  at 
sight.  So  now,  every  day  when  their  landlady  had 
gone  out,  he  moved  his  music-stand  into  the  little  par 
lor,  and  they  went  at  the  task.  Thyrsis  proposed  to 
achieve  it  by  a  tour  de  force — the  way  to  read  German 
was  to  read  it,  and  the  way  to  read  music  was  to  read 
music.  He  would  set  up  a  piece  they  had  never  seen 
before,  and  they  would  begin ;  and  he  would  pound  out 
the  time  with  his  foot,  and  make  Corydon  keep  up  with 
him — even  though  she  was  only  able  to  get  one  or  two 
notes  in  each  bar,  still  she  must  keep  up  with  him.  At 
first  this  was  agony  to  her — she  wanted  to  linger  and 
get  some  semblance  of  the  music ;  but  Thyrsis  would 
scold  and  exhort  and  shout,  and  pound  out  the  time. 

And  so,  to  Corydon's  own  amazement,  it  was  not 
many  weeks  before  she  found  that  she  was  actually  read- 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  155 

Ing  music,  that  they  were  playing  it  together.  In  this 
way  they  learned  Haydn's  and  Mozart's  sonatas,  they 
even  adventured  Beethoven's  trios,  with  the  second  violin 
left  out.  Then  Thyrsis  subscribed  to  a  music-library, 
and  would  come  home  twice  a  week  with  an  armful  of 
new  stuff,  good  and  bad.  And  whenever  in  all  their 
struggles  with  it  they  were  able  to  achieve  anything 
that  really  moved  them  as  music,  what  a  rapture  it 
brought  them ! 

§  7.  THIS  was  indeed  the  nearest  they  could  ever 
come  to  creative  achievement  together ;  this  was  the  one 
field  in  which  their  abilities  were  equal.  In  all  other 
things  there  were  disharmonies — they  came  upon  many 
reefs  and  shoals  in  these  uncharted  matrimonial  seas. 

Thyrsis  was  swift  and  impatient,  and  had  flung  away 
all  care  about  external  things ;  and  here  was  Corydon, 
a  woman,  with  all  a  woman's  handicaps  and  disabilities. 
She  was  like  a  little  field-mouse  in  her  care  of  her  per 
son — she  must  needs  scrub  herself  minutely  every  morn 
ing,  and  have  hot  water  for  her  face  every  night ;  her 
hair  had  to  be  braided  and  her  nails  had  to  be  cared 
for — and  oh,  the  time  it  took  her  to  get  her  clothes  on, 
or  even  to  get  ready  for  the  street !  She  would  strug 
gle  like  one  possessed  to  accomplish  it  more  quickly, 
while  Thyrsis  chafed  and  growled  and  agonized  in  the 
next  room.  There  was  nothing  he  could  do  meantime — 
for  were  they  not  going  to  do  everything  together? 

Then  there  was  another  stumbling-block — the  news 
papers  !  Thyrsis  had  to  know  what  was  going  on  in  the 
world.  He  had  learned  to  read  the  papers  and  maga 
zines  like  an  exchange-editor;  his  eye  would  fly  from 
column  to  column,  and  he  would  rip  the  insides  out  of 
one  in  two  or  three  minutes.  To  Corydon  it  was  agony 


156  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

to  see  him  do  this,  for  it  took  her  half  an  hour  to 
read  a  newspaper.  She  besought  him  to  read  it  out 
loud — and  was  powerless  to  understand  the  distress 
that  this  caused  him.  He  stood  it  as  long  as  he  could, 
and  then  he  took  to  marking  in  the  papers  the  things 
that  she  needed  to  know;  and  this  he  continued  to  do 
religiously,  until  he  had  come  to  realize  that  Cory  don 
never  remembered  anything  that  she  read  in  the  papers. 

This  was  something  it  took  him  years  to  compre 
hend  ;  there  were  certain  portions  of  the  ordinary  human 
brain  which  simply  did  not  exist  in  his  wife.  She  had 
lived  eighteen  years  in  the  world,  and  it  had  never 
occurred  to  her  to  ask  how  steam  made  an  engine  go, 
or  what  was  the  use  of  the  little  glass  knobs  on  the 
telegraph-poles.  And  it  was  the  same  with  politics 
and  business,  and  with  the  thousand  and  one  personali 
ties  of  the  hour.  When  these  things  came  up,  Thyrsis 
would  patiently  explain  to  her  what  she  needed  to  know ; 
and  he  would  take  it  for  granted  that  she  would  pounce 
upon  the  information  and  stow  it  away  in  her  mind — 
just  as  he  would  have  done  in  a  similar  case.  But  then, 
two  or  three  weeks  later,  the  same  topic  would  come 
up,  and  he  would  see  a  look  of  sudden  terror  come 
into  Corydon's  eyes — she  had  forgotten  every  word  of 
it! 

He  came,  after  a  long  time,  to  honor  this  ignorance. 
People  had  to  bring  some  real  credentials  with  them  to 
win  a  place  in  Corydon's  thoughts ;  it  was  not  enough 
that  they  were  conspicuous  in  the  papers.  And  it  was 
the  same  with  facts  of  all  sorts ;  science  existed  for 
Corydon  only  as  it  pointed  to  beauty,  and  history  ex 
isted  only  as  it  was  inspiring.  They  read  Green's 
"History  of  the  English  People"  in  the  evenings ;  and 
every  now  and  then  Corydon  would  have  to  go  and 


THE    VICTIM    APPROACHES  157 

plunge  her  face  into  cold  water  to  keep  her  eyes  open. 
The  long  parliamentary  struggle  was  utter  confusion 
to  her — she  had  no  joy  to  watch  how  "freedom  slowly 
broadens  down  from  precedent  to  precedent."  But 
once  in  a  while  there  would  come  some  story,  like  that 
of  Joan  of  Arc — and  there  would  be  the  girl,  with  her 
hands  clenched,  and  hot  tears  in  her  eyes,  and  the  fires 
of  martyrdom  blazing  in  her  soul ! 

These  were  the  hours  which  revealed  to  Thyrsis  the 
treasure  he  had  won — the  creature  of  pure  beauty  whose 
heart  was  in  his  keeping.  He  was  humbled  and  afraid 
before  her;  but  the  agony  of  it  was  that  he  could  not 
dwell  in  those  regions  of  joy  with  her — he  had  to  know 
about  stupid  things  and  vulgar  people,  he  had  to  go 
out  among  them  to  scramble  for  a  living.  So  there  had 
to  be  a  side  to  his  mind  that  Corydon  could  not  share. 
And  it  did  not  suffice  just  to  tolerate  the  existence  of 
such  things — he  had  to  be  actively  interested  in  them, 
and  to  take  their  point  of  view.  How  else  could  he 
hold  his  place  in  the  world,  how  could  he  win  in  the 
struggle  for  life? 

This,  he  strove  to  persuade  himself,  was  the  one 
real  difficulty  between  them,  the  one  thing  that  marred 
the  perfection  of  their  bliss.  But  as  time  went  on,  he 
came  to  suspect  that  there  was  something  else — some 
thing  even  more  vital  and  important.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  he  had  given  up  that  which  was  the  chief  source  of 
his  power — his  isolation.  The  center  of  his  conscious 
ness  had  been  shifted  outside  of  himself ;  and  try  as  he 
would,  he  could  never  get  it  back.  Where  now  were 
the  hours  and  hours  of  silent  brooding?  Where  were 
the  long  battles  in  his  own  soul?  And  what  was  to  take 
the  place  of  them — could  conversation  do  it,  conversa 
tion  no  matter  how  interesting  and  worth  while? 


158  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis  had  often  quoted  a  saying  of  Emerson's,  that 
"people  descend  to  meet."  And  when  one  was  married, 
did  not  one  have  to  descend  all  the  time? 

He  reasoned  the  matter  out  to  himself.  It  was  not 
Corydon's  fault,  he  saw  clearly ;  it  would  have  been  the 
same  had  he  married  one  of  the  seraphim.  He  did  not 
want  to  live  the  life  of  any  seraph — he  wanted  to  live 
his  own  life.  And  was  it  not  obvious  that  the  mere 
physical  proximity  of  another  person  kept  one's  atten 
tion  upon  external  things?  Was  not  one  inevitably 
kept  aware  of  trivialities  and  accidents?  Thyrsis  had 
.an  ideal,  that  he  should  never  permit  an  idle  word  to 
pass  his  lips ;  and  now  he  saw  how  inevitably  the  com 
mon-place  crept  in  upon  them — how,  for  instance,  their 
•conversation  had  a  way  of  turning  to  personality  and 
jesting.  Corydon  was  sensitive  to  external  things,  and 
she  kept  him  aware  of  the  fact  that  his  trousers  were 
frayed  and  his  hair  unkempt,  and  that  other  people 
were  remarking  these  things. 

Such  was  marriage ;  and  it  made  all  the  more  differ 
ence  to  an  author,  he  reasoned,  because  an  author  was 
always  at  home.  Thyrsis  had  been  accustomed,  when  he 
opened  his  eyes  in  the  morning,  to  lie  still  and  let  images 
and  fancies  come  trooping  through  his  mind;  he  would 
plan  his  whole  day's  work  in  that  way,  while  his  fancy 
was  fresh  and  there  was  nothing  to  disturb  him.  But 
now  he  had  to  get  up  and  dress,  thus  scattering  these 
visions.  In  the  same  way,  he  had  been  wont  to  walk 
and  meditate  for  hours ;  but  now  he  never  walked  alone. 
That  meant  incidentally  that  he  no  longer  got  the  exer 
cise  he  needed — because  Corydon  could  never  walk  at 
liis  pace.  And  if  this  was  the  case  with  such  external 
things,  how  much  more  was  it  the  case  with  the  strange 
impulses  of  his  inmost  soul !  Thyrsis  was  now  like  a 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  159 

hunter,  who  starts  a  deer,  and  instead  of  putting  spurs 
to  his  horse  and  following  it,  has  to  wait  to  summon 
a  companion — and  meanwhile,  of  course,  the  deer  is 
gone ! 

From  all  this  there  was  but  one  deliverance  for  them, 
and  that  was  music.  Music  was  their  real  interest, 
music  was  their  religion ;  and  if  only  they  could  go  on 
and  grow  in  it — if  only  they  could  acquire  technique 
enough  to  live  their  lives  in  it !  This  would  take  years, 
of  course ;  but  they  did  not  mind  that,  they  were  willing 
to  work  every  day  until  they  were  exhausted — if  only 
the  world  would  give  them  a  chance !  But  alas,  the 
world  did  not  seem  to  be  minded  that  way. 

§  8.  THYRSIS  had  waited  a  week,  and  then  written 
the  second  publisher,  and  received  a  reply  to  the  effect 
that  at  least  two  weeks  were  needed  for  the  consideration 
of  a  manuscript.  And  meantime  his  last  penny  was 
gone,  and  he  was  living  on  Corydon's  money.  It  was 
clear  that  he  must  earn  something  at  once ;  and  so  he 
had  to  leave  her  to  study  and  practice  in  her  own  room, 
while  he  cudgelled  his  brains  and  tormented  his  soul 
with  hack-work. 

He  tried  his  verses  again;  but  he  found  that  the 
spring  had  dried  up  in  him.  Life  was  now  too  sombre 
a  thing,  the  happy  spontaneous  jingles  came  no  more. 
And  what  he  did  by  main  force  of  will  sounded  hollow 
and  vapid  to  him — and  must  have  sounded  so  to  the 
editors,  who  sent  them  back. 

Then  he  tried  book-reviewing;  but  oh,  the  ghastly 
farce  of  book-reviewing!  To  read  futile  writing  and 
sham  writing  of  a  hundred  degrading  varieties — and 
never  dare  to  utter  a  truth  about  them !  To  labor  in 
stead  to  put  one's  self  in  the  place  of  the  school-girl 


160  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

reader  and  the  tired  shop-clerk  reader  and  the  senti 
mental  married-woman  reader,  and  imagine  what  they 
would  think  about  the  book,  and  what  they  would  like 
to  have  said  about  it!  To  take  these  little  pieces  of 
dishonesty  to  an  office,  and  sit  by  trembling  while  they 
were  read,  and  receive  two  dollars  apiece  for  them  if 
they  were  published,  and  nothing  at  all  if  one  had  been 
so  lacking  in  cunning  as  to  let  the  editor  think  that  the 
book  was  not  worth  the  space ! 

However,  Thyrsis  had  cunning  enough  to  earn  the 
cost  of  his  room  and  his  food  for  two  weeks  more. 
Then  one  day  the  postman  brought  him  a  letter,  the 
inscription  of  which  made  his  heart  give  a  throb.  He 
ripped  the  envelope  open  and  read  a  communication 
from  the  second  publisher: 

"We  have  been  interested  in  your  manuscript,  and 
while  we  do  not  feel  that  we  can  undertake  its  publica 
tion,  we  should  like  an  opportunity  to  talk  with  you 
about  it." 

"What  does  that  mean?"  asked  Corydon,  trembling. 

"God  knows,"  he  answered.  "I'll  go  and  see  them 
this  morning." 

When  he  came  back,  it  was  to  sink  into  a  chair  and 
stare  in  front  of  him  with  a  savage  frown.  "Don't  ask 
me!"  he  said,  to  Corydon.  "Don't  ask!" 

"Please  tell  me !"  cried  the  girl.     "Did  you  see  them  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Thyrsis— "I  saw  a  fat  man !" 

"A  fat  man !" 

"Yes — a  fat  man.  A  fat  body,  and  a  fat  mind,  and  a 
fat  soul." 

"Please  tell  me,  Thyrsis!" 

"He  said  my  book  wouldn't  sell,  because  the  public 
had  got  tired  of  that  sort  of  thing." 

"That  sort  of  thing !" 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  161 

"It  seems  that  people  used  to  buy  'historical  ro 
mances',  and  now  they've  stopped.  The  man  actually 
thought  my  book  was  one  of  that  kind!" 

"I  see.     But  then — couldn't  you  tell  him?" 

"I  told  him.  I  said,  'Can't  you  see  that  this  book  is 
original — that  it's  come  out  of  a  man's  heart?'  'Yes,' 
he  said,  'perhaps.  But  you  can't  expect  the  public  to 
see  it.'  And  so  there  you  are!" 

Thyrsis  sat  with  his  nails  dug  into  his  palms.  "It's 
just  like  the  book-reviews !"  he  cried.  "He  knows  bet 
ter,  but  that  doesn't  count — he's  thinking  about  the 
public !  And  he's  got  to  the  point  where  he  doesn't 
really  care — he's  a  fat  man !" 

"And  so  he'll  not  publish  the  book?" 

"He'll  not  have  anything  more  to  do  with  me.  He 
hates  me." 

''Hates  you?" 

"Yes.  Because  I  have  faith,  and  he  hasn't !  Because 
I  wouldn't  stoop  to  the  indignity  he  offered!" 

"What  did  he  offer?" 

"He  says  that  what  the  public's  reading  now  is 
society  novels---stories  about  up-to-date  people  who  are 
handsome  and  successful  and  rich.  They  want  auto 
mobiles  and  theatre-parties  and  country-clubs  in  their 
novels." 

"But  Thyrsis !  You  don't  know  anything  about  such 
things !" 

"I  know.  But  he  said  I  could  find  out.  And  so  I 
could.  The  point  he  made  was  that  I've  got  passion 
and  color — I  could  write  a  moving  love-story !  In  other 
words,  I  could  use  my  ecstasy  to  describe  two  society- 
people  mating!" 

There  was  a  pause.  "And  what  did  you  do  with  the 
manuscript?"  asked  Corydon,  in  a  low  voice. 


162  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I  took  it  to  another  publisher,"  he  answered. 

"And  what  are  you  going  to  do  now?" 

"I've  been  to  see  the  editor  of  the  'Treasure  Chest.'  " 

The  "Treasure  Chest"  was  a  popular  magazine  of 
fiction,  a  copy  of  which  Thyrsis  had  seen  lying  upon 
the  table  of  their  landlady.  He  had  glanced  through 
the  first  story,  and  had  declared  to  Corydon  that  if  he 
had  a  stenographer  he  could  talk  such  a  story  at  the 
rate  of  twenty  thousand  words  a  day. 

"And  did  the  editor  see  you?" 

"Yes.  He's  a  big  husky  'advertising  man'" — he  looks 
like  a  prize-fighter.  He  said  if  I  could  write,  to  go 
ahead  and  prove  it.  He  pays  a  cent  for  five  words — 
a  hundred  dollars  for  a  complete  serial.  He  pays  on 
acceptance;  and  he  said  he'd  read  a  scenario  for  me. 
So  I'm  going  to  try  it." 

"What's  it  to  be  about?"  asked  Corydon. 

"I'm  going  to  try  what  they  call  a  'Zenda'  story," 
said  Thyrsis.  "The  editor  says  the  readers  of  the 
'Treasure  Chest'  haven't  got  tired  of  'Zenda'  stories." 

And  so  Thyrsis  spent  the  afternoon  and  evening 
wandering  about  in  the  park;  and  sometime  after  mid 
night  he  wrote  out  his  scenario.  The  advantage  of  a 
"Zenda"  story  was  that,  as  the  adventures  happened 
in  an  imaginary  kingdom,  there  would  be  no  need  to 
study  up  "local  color".  As  for  the  conventional  arti 
ficial  dialect,  he  could  get  it  from  any  of  the  "ro 
mances"  in  the  nearby  circulating  library.  He  did  not 
dare  to  take  the  scenario  the  next  day,  but  waited  a 
decent  interval ;  and  when  he  returned  it  was  to  re 
port  that  the  story  was  considered  to  be  promising,  and 
that  he  was  to  write  twenty  thousand  words  for  a 
test. 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  163 

§  9.  So  Thyrsis  shut  himself  up  and  went  to  work. 
Sometimes  he  wrote  with  rage  seething  in  his  heart,  and 
sometimes  with  laughter  on  his  lips.  This  latter  was 
the  case  when  he  did  the  love-scenes — because  of  the 
"passion  and  color"  he  bestowed  upon  the  fascinating 
countess  and  the  clever  young  American  engineer.  He 
could  have  written  the  twenty  thousand  words  in  three 
days ;  but  he  waited  ten  days,  so  that  the  editor  might 
not  think  that  he  was  careless.  And  three  days  later 
he  went  back  for  the  verdict. 

The  editor  said  it  was  good,  and  that  if  the  rest  was 
like  it  he  would  accept  the  story.  So  Thyrsis  went  to 
work  again,  and  finished  the  manuscript,  and  put  it 
away  until  time  enough  had  elapsed.  And  meanwhile 
came  a  letter  from  the  literary  head  of  the  third  pub 
lishing-house,  regretting  that  he  could  not  accept  the 
book. 

It  was  such  a  friendly  letter  that  Thyrsis  wenV  to 
call  there,  and  met  a  pleasant  and  rather  fine-souled 
gentleman,  Mr.  Ardsley  by  name,  who  told  him  a  little 
about  the  problems  he  faced  in  life. 

"You  have  a  fine  talent,"  he  said — "you  may  even 
have  genius.  Your  book  is  obviously  sincere — it's  vecn, 
as  the  French  say.  I  suspect  you  must  have  been  in 
love  when  you  wrote  it." 

"In  a  way,"  said  Thyrsis,  flushing  slightly.  He  had 
not  intended  that  to  show. 

The  other  smiled.  "It's  overwrought  in  places,"  he 
went  on,  "and  it  tends  to  incoherency.  But  the  main 
trouble  is  that  it's  entirely  over  the  heads  of  the  public. 
They  don't  know  anything  about  the  kind  of  love  you're 
interested  in,  and  they'd  laugh  at  it." 

"But  then,  what  am  I  to  do?"  cried  Thyrsis. 


164  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"You'll  simply  have  to  keep  on  trying,  till  you  hap 
pen  to  strike  it." 

"But— how  am  I  to  live?" 

"Ah,"  said  Mr.  Ardsley,  "that  is  the  problem."  He 
smiled,  rather  sadly,  as  he  sat  watching  the  lad.  "You 
see  how  I've  solved  it,"  he  went  on.  "I  was  young  once 
myself,  and  I  tried  to  write  novels.  And  in  those  days 
I  blamed  the  publishers — I  thought  they  stood  in  my 
way.  But  now,  I  see  how  it  is ;  a  publisher  is  engaged 
in  a  highly  competitive  business,  and  he  barely  makes 
interest  on  his  capital ;  he  can't  afford  to  publish  books 
that  won't  pay  their  way.  Here  am  I,  for  instance — 
it's  my  business  to  advise  this  house;  and  if  I  advise 
them  wrongly,  what  becomes  of  me?  If  I  take  them 
your  manuscript  and  say,  'It's  a  real  piece  of  work,' 
they'll  ask  me,  'Will  it  pay  its  way?'  And  I  have  to 
answer  them,  'I  don't  think  it  will.'  ' 

"But  such  things  as  they  publish!"  exclaimed  the 
boy,  wildly. 

And  Mr.  Ardsley  smiled  again.  "Yes,"  he  said.  "But 
they  pay  their  way.  In  fact,  they  save  the  business." 

So  Thyrsis  went  out.  He  saw  quite  clearly  now  the 
simple  truth — it  was  not  a  matter  of  art  at  all,  but 
a  matter  of  business.  It  was  a  business-world,  and  not 
an  art-world;  and  he — poor  fool — was  trying  to  be 
an  artist ! 

For  three  days  more  he  toiled  at  his  pot-boiler ;  and 
then,  late  at  night,  he  went  out  to  get  some  fresh  air, 
and  to  try  to  shake  off  the  load  of  despair  that  was 
upon  him.  And  so  came  the  explosion. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  the  wind  was  blowing,  and 
Thyrsis  loved  the  wind;  it  was  a  mirror  of  his  own 
soul  to  him,  incessant  and  irresistible  and  mysterious. 
And  so  his  demons  awoke  again.  He  had  gone  through 


THE    VICTIM   APPROACHES  165 

all  that  labor,  he  had  built  up  all  that  glory  in  his 
spirit — and  it  was  all  for  naught!  He  had  made  him 
self  a  flame  of  desire — and  now  it  was  to  be  smothered 
and  stifled! 

He  had  written  his  book,  and  it  was  a  great  book* 
and  they  knew  it.  But  all  they  told  him  was  to  go  and 
write  another  book — and  to  do  pot-boilers  in  the  mean 
time  !  But  that  was  impossible,  he  could  not  do  it~ 
He  would  win  with  the  book  he  had  written !  He  would 
make  them  hear  him — he  would  make  them  read  that 
book! 

He  began  to  compose  a  manifesto  to  the  world ;  and! 
towards  morning  he  came  home  and  shut  himself  in  and 
wrote  it.  He  called  it  "Business  and  Art;"  and  in  it 
he  told  about  his  book,  and  how  he  had  worked  over  it. 
He  told,  quite  frankly,  what  the  book  was ;  and  he  asked 
if  there  was  anywhere  in  the  United  States  a  publisher 
who  published  books  because  they  were  noble,  and  not 
because  they  sold;  or  if  there  was  a  critic,  or  book- 
lover,  or  philanthropist,  or  a  person  of  any  sort,  who 
would  stand  by  a  true  artist.  "This  artist  will  work 
all  day  and  nearly  all  night,"  he  wrote,  "and  he  wants 
less  than  the  wages  of  a  day-laborer.  All  else  that  ever 
comes  to  him  in  his  life  he  will  give  for  a  chance  to 
follow  his  career!" 

Then  Corydon  awoke,  and  he  read  it  to  her.  She 
listened,  thrilling  with  amazement. 

"Oh,  Thyrsis !"  she  cried.  "What  are  you  going  to 
do  with  it?" 

"I'm  going  to  have  it  printed,"  he  said,  "and  send 
it  to  all  the  publishers;  and  also  to  literary  men  and 
to  magazines." 

"And  are  you  going  to  sign  your  name  to  it?"  she 
cried. 


166  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I've  already  signed  my  name  to  it,"  he  answered. 

"And  when  are  you  going  to  do  it?" 

"As  soon  as  the  book  comes  back  from  the  next 
publisher." 

Then  he  sat  down  to  breakfast;  and  afterwards, 
without  resting,  he  finished  the  pot-boiler,  and  took  it 
to  the  editor.  After  a  due  interval  he  went  again, 
trembling  and  faint  with  anxiety.  He  had  sold  only 
one  book-review,  and  he  was  using  Corydon's  money 
again.  People  who  hated  him  had  predicted  that  he 
would  do  just  that,  and  he  had  answered  that  he  would 
die  first ! 

He  came  home,  radiant  with  delight.  "He  says  he'll 
take  it!"  he  proclaimed.  "Only  I've  got  to  do  a  new- 
ending  for  the  fourth  installment — he  wants  something 
more  exciting.  So  I'm  going  to  have  the  countess 
caught  in  a  burning  tower !" 

And  he  wrote  that,  and  went  yet  again,  and  came 
home  with  a  hundred  dollars  buttoned  tightly  in  his 
inside  vest-pocket.  He  was  like  a  man  who  has  es 
caped  from  a  dungeon.  The  field  was  clear  before  him 
at  last !  His  manifesto  was  going  out  to  the  world ! 


BOOK  V 
THE  BAIT  IS  SEIZED 


They  sat,  gazing  down  the  slope  of  the  little  vale. 
She  was  turning  idly  the  pages  of  the  book,  and  she 
read  to  him — 

"Lovely  all  times  she  lies,  lovely  to-night!— 
Only,  methinks,  some  loss  of  habit's  power 

Befalls  me  wandering  through  this  upland  dim. 
Once  pass'd  I  blindfold  here,  at  any  hour; 

Now  seldom  come  I,  since  I  came  with  him." 

"It  was  here  we  first  read  the  poem"  he  said. 
"Every  spot  brings  back  some  line  of  it." 

"Even  the  old  oak-tree  where  we  used  to  sit,"  she 
smiled 

"Hear  it,  0  Thyrsis,  still  our  tree  is  there!" 


§  1.  THYRSIS  was  half  hoping  that  the  next  pub 
lisher  would  decline  the  manuscript;  and  he  was  only 
mildly  stirred  when  he  got  a  letter  saying  that  although 
the  publisher  could  not  make  an  offer  for  the  book, 
one  of  his  readers  was  so  much  interested  in  it  that 
he  would  like  to  have  a  talk  with  the  author.  Thyrsis 
replied  that  he  was  willing;  and  to  his  surprise  he 
learned  that  the  reader  was  none  other  than  that  Prof. 
Osborne,  who  in  the  university  had  impressed  upon 
him  his  ignorance  of  the  art  of  writing. 

He  paid  a  call  at  the  professor's  home,  and  they 
had  a  long  talk.  There  was  nothing  said  about  their 
former  interview.  Evidently  the  other  recognized  that 
Thyrsis  had  succeeded  in  making  good  his  claim  to 
be  allowed  to  hew  his  own  way ;  and  Thyrsis  was  content 
with  that  tacit  surrender. 

They  talked  about  the  book.  The  professor  first 
assured  him  that  it  would  not  sell,  and  then  went  on 
to  explain  to  him  why ;  and  so  they  came  to  a  grapple. 

"The  thing  is  sincere,  perhaps  even  exalted,"  said 
Prof.  Osborne ;  "but  it's  overstrained  and  exaggerated." 

"But  isn't  it  alive?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

The  other  pondered;  he  always  spoke  deliberately, 
choosing  his  words  with  precision.  "Some  people  might 
think  so,"  he  said.  "For  myself,  I  have  never  known 
any  such  life." 

"But  what's  that  got  to  do  with  it?"  cried  Thyrsis. 

"It  has  much  to  do  with  it — for  me.     One  has  to 

judge  by  what  one  knows " 

169 


170  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"But  can't  one  be  taught?" 

The  professor  meditated  again.  "I  have  lived  forty- 
five  years,"  he  said,  "and  you  have  lived  less  than  half 
that.  I  imagine  that  I  have  read  more,  studied  more, 
thought  more  than  you.  Yet  you  ask  me  to  submit 
myself  to  your  teaching !" 

"No,  no!"  cried  Thyrsis,  eagerly.  "It  is  not  as  if 
it  were  a  matter  of  learning — of  scholarship — of  knowl 
edge  of  the  world.  There  is  an  intensity  of  experience 
that  is  not  dependent  upon  time ;  in  the  things  of  the 
imagination — in  matters  of  inspiration — surely  one 
does  not  have  to  be  old  or  learned." 

"That  might  be  true,"  admitted  the  other,  hesitat 
ingly. 

"You  read  the  poetry  of  Keats  or  Shelley,  for  in 
stance.  They  were  as  young  as  I  am  when  they  wrote 
it,  and  yet  you  do  not  refuse  to  acknowledge  its  worth. 
Is  it  just  because  they  are  dead,  and  their  poems  are 
classics?" 

So  these  two  wrestled  it  out.  Thyrsis  could  bring 
the  other  to  the  point  of  acknowledging  that  there 
might  be  genius  in  his  work,  but  he  could  not  bring 
him  to  the  point  of  doing  anything  about  it.  The  poet 
went  away,  seeing  the  situation  quite  clearly.  Prof. 
Osborne  was  an  instructor ;  it  was  his  business  to  know ; 
and  if  he  should  abdicate  before  one  of  his  pupils, 
then  what  would  become  of  authority?  He  had  certain 
models,  which  he  set  before  his  class ;  these  models  con 
stituted  literature.  If  anyone  might  disregard  them 
and  proceed  to  create  new  models  according  to  his  own 
lawless  impulse — then  what  anarchy  would  reign  in  a 
classroom !  Under  such  circumstances,  it  was  remark 
able  that  the  professor  had  even  been  willing  to  admit 
of  doubts;  as  Thyrsis  walked  home  he  clenched  his 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  171 

hands  and  whispered  to  himself,  "I'll  get  that  man  some 
day !" 

§  2.  THE  road  now  lay  clear  before  Thyrsis,  and 
accordingly  he  set  grimly  to  work.  He  had  his  docu 
ment  printed  upon  a  long  slip  of  paper,  and  got  sev 
eral  packages  for  Corydon  to  address.  And  one  evening 
they  took  them  out  and  dropped  them  into  the  mail 
box.  "And  now  we'll  see !"  he  said. 

They  soon  saw.  When  he  came  in  for  lunch  the  next 
day,  Corydon  came  to  the  door,  in  great  excitement. 
"S-sh!"  she  whispered.  "There's  a  reporter  here!" 

"A  reporter!"  he  echoed. 

"Yes — a  woman." 

"What  does  she  want?" 

"She  wants  an  interview  about  the  book." 

"Where  is  she  from?" 

"She's  from  the  'Morning  Howl'.  She's  read  the 
circular." 

"But  I  never  sent  it  there!" 

"I  know ;  but  she  says  a  friend  gave  it  to  her.  She 
knows  all  about  it." 

So  Thyrsis  went  in,  like  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter. 
He  was  new  to  interviews,  and  he  yielded  to  the  graces 
of  the  friendly  and  sympathetic  lady.  Yes,  he  would 
be  glad  to  tell  about  his  book;  and  about  where  and 
how  he  had  written  it,  and  all  the  hopes  he  had  based 
upon  it. 

"And  your  wife  tells  me  you've  just  been  married!" 
said  the  lady,  with  a  winning  smile,  and  she  proceeded 
to  question  him  about  this.  They  had  become  good 
friends  by  that  time,  and  Thyrsis  told  her  many  things 
that  he  would  not  have  told  save  to  a  charming  lady. 
And  then  she  asked  for  his  picture,  explaining  that  she 


172  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

could  give  so  much  more  space  to  the  "story"  if  she 
had  one.  And  then  she  begged  for  a  picture  of  Cory- 
don,  and  was  deeply  hurt  that  she  could  not  have  it. 

She  prolonged  the  interview  for  an  hour  or  so,  and 
came  back  again  and  again  in  the  effort  to  get  this 
picture  of  Corydon.  Finally  she  rose  to  go;  but  out 
in  the  hall,  as  she  was  bidding  them  good-bye,  she  sud 
denly  exclaimed  that  she  had  left  her  gloves,  and  went 
back  and  got  them,  and  then  hurried  away.  And  it 
was  not  until  an  hour  or  two  later  that  Thyrsis  made 
the  horrible  discovery  that  the  photograph  of  Corydon 
which  had  stood  upon  his  bureau  was  standing  upon 
his  bureau  no  longer ! 

So  next  morning,  there  were  their  two  photographs 
upon  the  second  page  of  the  'Morning  Howl',  and  a 
two-column  headline: 

"YOUTHFUL  GENIUS  OFFERS  HIMSELF  FOR  SALE!" 

Thyrsis  rushed  through  this  article,  writhing  with 
horror  and  dismay.  The  woman  had  made  him  into 
what  they  called  a  "human  interest"  feature.  There 
was  very  little  about  his  book,  but  there  was  much  about 
the  picturesque  circumstances  under  which  he  had  writ 
ten  it.  There  was  a  description  of  their  personal  ap 
pearance — of  Corydon's  sweet  face  and  soulful  black 
eyes,  and  of  his  broad  forehead  and  sensitive  lips. 
There  was  also  a  complete  description  of  their  domestic 
menage,  including  the  chafing-dish  and  the  odor  of 
lamb-chops.  There  was  a  highly  diverting  account  of 
how  they  had  "eloped"  with  only  eight  dollars  in  the 
world;  together  with  all  the  agonies  of  their  parents, 
as  imagined  by  the  sympathetic  lady. 

They  had  been  butchered  to  make  a  holiday  for  the 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  173 

readers  of  a  yellow  journal!  "This  is  a  wonderfully 
interesting  world,"  the  paper  seemed  to  say — "well 
worth  the  penny  it  costs  to  read  about  it!  Here  on  the 
first  page  is  Antonio  Petronelli,  who  cut  up  his  sweet 
heart  with  a  butcher-knife,  and  packed  her  in  a  trunk. 
And  here  are  seven  people  burned  in  a  tenement-house ; 
and  an  interview  with  Shrike,  the  plunger,  who  made 
three  millions  out  of  the  wheat-corner.  But  most  di 
verting  of  all  are  these  two  little  cherubs  who  ran  away 
and  got  married,  and  now  want  the  world  to  support 
them  while  they  write  masterpieces  of  literature !" 

And  could  not  one  see  the  great  public  devouring  the 
tale — the  Wall  Street  clerks  in  the  cars,  and  the  shop 
girls  over  their  sandwiches  and  coffee,  and  the  loungers 
in  the  cafes  of  the  Tenderloin !  Could  not  one  picture 
their  smiles — not  contemptuous,  but  genial,  as  of  people 
who  have  learned  that  it  is  indeed  an  interesting  world, 
and  well  worth  the  penny  it  costs  to  read  about  it ! 

§  3.  CORYDON  shed  tears  of  rage  over  this  humilia 
tion,  and  she  wrote  a  letter  full  of  bitter  scorn  to  the 
newspaper  woman.  In  reply  to  it  came  a  friendly  note 
to  the  effect  that  she  had  done  the  best  thing  in  the 
world  for  them — that  when  they  knew  more  about  life 
and  the  literary  game,  they  would  recognize  this ! 

The  tangible  results  of  the  adventure  were  three. 
First  there  came  a  letter,  written  on  scented  note-paper, 
from  a  lady  who  commended  their  noble  ideals  and 
wished  them  success — but  who  did  not  sign  her  name. 
Second,  there  came  a  visit  from  a  brother  poet — a 
man  about  forty  years  of  age,  shabby  and  pitiful,  with 
watery,  light  blue  eyes  and  a  feeble  straggly  moustache, 
and  a  manner  of  agonized  diffidence.  He  stood  in  the 
doorway  and  shifted  from  one  foot  to  the  other,  and 


174  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

explained  that  he  had  read  the  article,  and  had  come 
because  he,  too,  was  an  unrecognized  genius.  He  had 
written  two  volumes  of  poetry,  which  were  the  greatest 
poetry  ever  produced  in  English — Milton  and  Shakes 
peare  would  be  forgotten  when  the  world  had  read  these 
volumes.  For  ten  years  he  had  been  trying  to  find  some 
publisher  or  literary  man  to  recognize  him;  and  per 
haps  Thyrsis  would  be  the  man. 

He  came  in  and  sat  on  the  bed  and  unwrapped  his 
two  volumes — several  hundred  typewritten  pages,  elab 
orately  bound  up  in  covers  of  faded  pink  silk.  And 
Thyrsis  read  one  and  Corydon  the  other,  while  the  poet 
sat  by  and  watched  them  and  twisted  his  hands  nerv 
ously.  His  poetry  was  all  about  stars  and  blue-bells 
and  moonlight,  about  springtime  and  sighing  lovers, 
about  cold,  rain-beaten  graves  and  faded  leaves  of 
autumn — the  subjects  and  the  images  which  have  been 
the  stock  in  trade  of  minor  poets  for  two  thousand  years 
and  more.  Thyrsis,  as  he  read,  could  have  marked 
fifty  phrases  which  were  feeble  imitations  of  things  in 
Tennyson  and  Longfellow  and  Keats ;  and  he  read  for 
half  an  hour,  in  the  vain  hope  of  finding  a  single 
vigorous  line. 

This  interview  was  a  very  painful  one.  He  could 
not  bear  to  hurt  the  poor  creature's  feelings,  and  he  did 
not  know  how  to  get  rid  of  him.  The  matter  was  made 
still  more  difficult  by  the  presence  of  Corydon,  who  did 
not  know  the  models,  and  therefore  thought  the  poetry 
was  good.  She  let  the  visitor  go  on  to  pour  out  his 
heart ;  until  at  last  came  a  climax  that  Thyrsis  had 
been  expecting  all  along.  The  man  explained  that  he 
was  a  bookkeeper,  out  of  work,  and  with  a  wife  and 
three  children  on  the  verge  of  starvation;  and  then  he 
tried  to  borrow  some  money  from  them ! 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  175 

The  third  result  was  the  important  one.  It  was 
a  letter  from  a  publishing-house. 

"We  are  on  the  lookout  for  vital  and  worth-while 
books,"  it  read,  "and  we  are  not  afraid  to  venture. 
We  have  been  much  interested  in  the  account  of  your 
work,  and  we  should  be  very  glad  if  you  would  give 
us  a  chance  to  read  it  immediately.'5 

Thyrsis  hud  never  heard  of  this  publishing-house, 
but  that  did  not  chill  his  delight.  He  hurried  down 
town  with  the  manuscript,  and  came  back  to  report. 
The  concern  was  lodged  in  two  small  rooms  in  an  ob 
scure  office-building.  The  manager,  a  Mr.  Taylor, 
was  a  man  not  particularly  prepossessing  in  appear 
ance,  but  he  was  a  person  of  intelligence,  and  was  evi 
dently  interested  in  the  book.  Moreover  he  had 
promised  to  read  it  at  once. 

And  that  same  week  came  the  reply — a  reply  which 
set  the  two  almost  beside  themselves  with  happiness. 
"I  have  read  your  manuscript,"  wrote  Mr.  -Taylor. 
"And  I  have  no  hesitation  in  pronouncing  it  a  work  of 
genius.  In  fact,  I  am  not  sure  but  what  it  is  the 
greatest  piece  of  literature  it  has  ever  been  my  fortune 
as  a  publisher  to  come  upon.  It  is  vital,  and  passion 
ately  sincere,  and  I  will  stake  my  reputation  upon  the 
prophecy  that  it  will  be  an  instantaneous  success.  I 
hope  that  we  may  become  the  publishers  of  it,  and  will 
be  glad  if  you  will  come  to  see  me  at  once  and  talk 
over  terms." 

Thyrsis  read  this  aloud ;  and  then  he  caught  Corydon 
in  his  arms,  and  tears  of  joy  and  relief  ran  down  her 
cheeks. 

He  went  to  see  the  publisher,  and  for  ten  or  fifteen 
minutes  he  listened  to  such  a  panegyric  upon  his  book 
as  made  his  cheeks  burn.  Visions  of  freedom  and 


176  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

triumph  rose  before  him — he  had  come  into  his  own  at 
last!  And  then  Mr.  Taylor  proceeded  to  outline 
his  business  proposition — and  as  Thyrsis  realized  the 
nature  of  it,  it  was  as  if  he  had  been  suddenly  plunged 
into  an  Arctic  sea.  The  man  wanted  him  to  pay  one- 
half  the  cost  of  the  plates  of  his  book,  and  in  addition 
to  guarantee  to  take  one  hundred  copies  at  the  whole 
sale  price  of  ninety  cents  per  copy! 

"Is  that — is  that  customary  in  publishing?"  asked 
the  other.  ' 

"Not  always,"  Mr.  Taylor  replied;  "but  it  is  our 
custom.  You  see,  we  are  an  unusual  sort  of  publishing- 
house.  We  do  not  run  after  the  best-sellers  and  the 
trash — we  publish  real  books,  books  with  a  mission  and 
a  message  for  the  world.  And  we  advertise  them  widely 
— we  make  the  world  heed  them;  and  so  we  feel  justified 
in  asking  the  author  to  help  us  with  a  part  of  the  ex 
pense.  We  pay  ten  per  cent,  royalty,  of  course,  and  in 
addition  the  author  has  the  hundred  copies  of  his  book, 
which  he  can  sell  to  friends  and  others  if  he  wishes." 

"What  would  it  cost  for  my  book?"  Thyrsis  asked. 

And  the  man  figured  it  up  and  told  him  it  could  be 
done  for  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  "I'll 
make  it  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  to  you,"  he  said 
— "just  because  of  my  interest  in  your  future." 

But  Thyrsis  only  shook  his  head  sadly.  "I  wish  I 
could  do  it,"  he  said,  "but  I  simply  haven't  the  money 
—that's  all." 

And  so  he  took  his  departure,  and  carried  his  manu 
script  to  another  publisher,  and  then  went  home,  crushed 
and  sick. 

§  4.  BUT  the  more  Thyrsis  thought  of  this  plan, 
the  more  it  came  to  possess  him.  If  he  could  only  get 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  177 

that  book  printed,  it  could  not  fail  to  make  its  im 
pression  !  He  had  thought  many  times  in  his  despera 
tion  of  trying  to  publish  it  himself ;  and  if  he  did  that, 
he  would  have  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  plates,  of  the 
printing  and  everything;  whereas  by  this  method  he 
could  get  it  for  much  less,  and  would  have  a  hundred 
copies  which  he  could  send  to  critics  and  men  of  letters, 
in  order  to  make  certain  of  the  book's  being  read. 

When  the  manuscript  came  back  from  the  next  pub 
lisher,  with  a  formal  note  of  rejection,  Thyrsis  made 
up  his  mind  that  he  would  concentrate  his  efforts  upon 
this  plan.  So  he  got  down  to  another  pot-boiler. 

An  old  sea-captain  had  told  him  a  story  of  some 
American  college  boys  who  had  stolen  a  sacred  idol 
in  China.  Thyrsis  saw  a  plot  in  that,  and  the  editor 
of  the  "Treasure  Chest"  considered  it  a  "bully"  idea. 
So  he  toiled  day  and  night  for  a  couple  more  weeks,  and 
earned  another  hundred  dollars.  And  then  he  did  some 
thing  he  had  never  done  in  his  life  before — he  went  to 
some  relatives  to  beg.  He  pleaded  how  hard  he  had 
worked,  and  what  a  chance  he  had ;  he  would  pay  back 
the  money  out  of  the  first  royalties  from  the  book — 
which  could  not  possibly  fail  to  earn  the  hundred  dol 
lars  he  asked  for. 

Besides  this,  he  had  some  money  left  from  his  first 
story;  and  so  he  went  to  Mr.  Taylor,  who  was  affable 
and  enthusiastic  as  ever,  and  paid  his  money  and  signed 
the  contracts.  He  was  told  that  his  book  would  be  ready 
for  the  spring-trade;  which  meant  that  he  would  have 
to  possess  his  soul  in  patience  for  three  months.  Mean 
time  he  had  forty  dollars  left — upon  which  he  figured 
that  he  could  have  eight  weeks  of  uninterrupted  study. 

But  alas,  for  the  best-laid  plans  of  men !  It  was  on 
a  Tuesday  morning  that  he  paid  out  his  precious  two 


178  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars ;  and  on  the  next  Thurs 
day  morning,  as  he  was  glancing  through  the  news 
papers,  he  gave  a  cry  of  dismay. 

"Corydon,"  he  called.  "What's  the  name  of  that 
lawyer,  your  trustee?" 

"John  C.  Hammond,"  she  replied. 

"He  shot  himself  in  his  office  yesterday !"  exclaimed 
Thyrsis ;  and  he  read  her  the  account,  which  stated  that 
Hammond  had  been  speculating,  and  was  believed  to 
have  lost  heavily  in  the  recent  slump  in  cotton. 

Corydon  was  staring  at  him  with  terror  in  her 
eyes.  "What  does  it  mean?"  she  cried. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Thyrsis.  "We'll  have  to  in 
quire  !" 

They  went  out  and  telephoned  to  Corydon's  father, 
and  Thyrsis  got  hold  of  a  college  friend,  a  lawyer,  and 
the  four  went  to  the  office  of  the  dead  man.  It  was 
weeks  before  they  became  sure  of  the  whole  sickening 
truth,  but  they  learned  enough  on  that  first  day  to  make 
them  fairly  certain.  John  C.  Hammond  had  got  rid  of 
everything — not  only  his  own  funds,  but  the  funds  be 
longing  to  the  eight  or  ten  heirs  of  the  estate.  The 
house  in  which  he  lived  and  everything  in  it  was  held 
in  the  name  of  his  wife ;  and  so  there  was  not  a  penny 
to  pay  Corydon  her  four  thousand  dollars ! 

The  girl  was  almost  prostrated  with  misery ;  she 
vowed  that  she  would  go  back  to  her  parents,  that  she 
would  go  to  work  in  an  office.  And  poor  Thyrsis 
could  only  hold  her  in  his  arms  and  whisper,  "It  doesn't 
matter,  dear — it  doesn't  matter !  The  book  will  be  out 
in  the  spring,  and  I  can  do  pot-boilers  for  two !" 

§  5.  BUT  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night  Thyrsis 
lay  awake  in  his  little  room,  and  the  soul  within  him  was 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  179 

sick  with  horror.  He  was  trapped — there  was  no  use 
trying  to  dodge  the  fact,  he  was  trapped!  His  powers 
were  waning  hour  by  hour,  his  vision  was  dying  within 
him ;  every  day  he  knew  that  he  was  weaker,  that  the 
grip  of  circumstance  was  tighter  upon  him.  Ah,  the 
hideous  cruelty  of  the  thing — it  was  like  a  murder  in 
the  night-time,  like  a  torturing  in  some  secret  dungeon ! 
He  was  burning  up  with  his  inward  fires — there  was 
a  new  book  coming  to  ripeness  within  him,  a  book  that 
would  be  greater  even  than  his  first  one.  And  he  could 
not  write  it,  he  could  not  even  think  about  it !  And 
there  was  the  soul  of  Corydon  calling  to  him,  there 
were  all  the  heights  of  music  and  poetry — and  instead 
of  climbing,  he  must  torture  his  brain  with  hack-writ 
ing!  He  must  go  down  to  the  editors,  and  fawn  and 
cringe,  and  try  to  get  books  to  review;  he  must  study 
the  imbecilities  of  the  magazines  and  watch  out  for 
topics  for  articles;  he  must  rack  his  brains  for  jokes 
and  jingles — he,  the  master  of  life,  the  bearer  of  a  new 
religion,  the  proud,  high-soaring  eagle,  whose  foot 
had  never  known  a  chain ! 

When  such  thoughts  came  to  him,  he  would  dig  his 
nails  into  the  palms  of  his  hands,  he  would  grit  his 
teeth  and  curse  the  world.  No,  they  should  not  con 
quer  him!  They  should  never  bend  him  to  their  will! 
They  might  starve  him,  they  might  kill  him — they 
might  kill  Corydon,  also,  but  he  would  never  give  up! 
He  would  fight,  and  fight  again,  he  would  struggle  to 
the  last  gasp — he  would  do  his  work,  though  all  the 
powers  of  hell  rose  up  to  stop  him ! 

One  thing  became  clear  to  him  that  night,  they  could 
not  afford  two  rooms.  They  must  -get  along  with  one, 
and  with  the  dollar  and  a  half  one  at  that.  The  steam- 
radiator  had  proved  a  farce,  anyway — there  was  never 


180  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

any  steam,  and  they  had  had  to  use  gas-heaters.  And 
now,  what  things  Corydon  could  not  get  into  his  room, 
she  would  have  to  send  back  to  her  parents.  The  cost 
of  the  other  room  was  the  price  of  a  book-review,  and 
that  sometimes  meant  a  whole  day  of  his  precious 
time. 

He  talked  it  over  with  his  wife,  and  she  agreed  with 
him.  And  so  they  underwent  the  humiliation  of  telling 
their  landlady,  and  they  obtained  permission  to  keep 
Corydon's  trunk  in  the  hall,  as  there  was  no  place  for 
it  in  the  tiny  room.  Such  things  as  would  not  go  upon 
the  little  dressing-stand,  or  hang  behind  the  door,  they 
put  into  boxes  and  shoved  under  the  bed.  And  now, 
when  midnight  came,  Thyrsis  would  go  out  for  a  walk 
while  Corydon  went  to  bed ;  and  then  he  would  come  in 
and  make  his  own  bed  upon  the  floor,  with  a  quilt  which 
the  landlady  had  given  them,  and  a  pair  of  blankets 
they  had  borrowed  from  home,  and  his  overcoat  and 
some  of  Corydon's  skirts  when  it  was  cold.  Sometimes 
it  would  be  very-  cold,  and  then  he  would  have  to  sleep 
in  his  clothing;  for  there  was  no  room  save  directly 
under  the  window,  and  they  would  not  sleep  with  the 
window  down.  In  the  morning  Corydon  would  turn  her 
face  to  the  wall  while  Thyrsis  washed  and  dressed ;  and 
then  he  would  go  out  and  walk,  while  she  took  her  turn. 

And  so  he  parted  with  the  last  shred  of  his  isolation. 
He  had  to  do  all  his  work  now  with  his  wife  in  the  room 
with  him.  And  though  she  would  sit  as  still  as  a  mouse 
for  hours,  still  he  could  not  think  as  before ;  also,  when 
she  was  worn  out  at  night,  he  had  to  stop  work  and 
let  her  sleep.  Under  such  circumstances  it  was  small 
wonder  that  he  was  sometimes  nervous  and  irritable; 
and,  of  course,  there  could  be  nothing  hid  between 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  181 

them,  and  when  he  was  out  of  sorts,  Corydon  would  be 
plunged  into  a  bottomless  pit  of  melancholy. 

Then  the  strain  and  worry,  and  the  night  and  day 
toil,  began  to  have  effects  upon  their  health.  Thyrsis 
had  a  strong  constitution,  but  now  he  began  to  have 
headaches,  and  sometimes,  if  he  worked  on  doggedly, 
they  grew  severe.  He  blamed  this  upon  their  heater; 
he  knew  little  about  hygiene,  but  he  had  studied  physics, 
and  he  knew  that  a  gas-heater  devitalized  the  air.  They 
had  tried  living  in  the  room  without  heat,  but  in  mid 
winter  they  could  not  stand  it.  So  on  moderate  days 
they  would  sit  with  the  window  up  and  their  overcoats 
on ;  and  when  it  was  too  cold  for  this,  they  would  burn 
the  heater  for  an  hour  or  so,  and  when  they  began  to 
feel  the  effects  of  the  poisons,  they  would  go  out  and 
walk  for  a  while  and  let  the  room  air. 

But  then  again,  Thyrsis  wondered  if  the  headaches 
might  not  be  due  to  the  food  he  was  eating.  They 
were  anxious  to  economize  on  food ;  but  they  did  not 
know  just  how  to  set  about  it.  Thyrsis  had  read  the 
world's  literature  in  English,  French  and  German,  in 
Italian,  Latin  and  Greek;  but  in  none  of  that  reading 
had  he  found  anything  about  the  care  of  his  own 
body.  Such  subjects  had  not  been  taught  at  school 
or  college  or  university,  and  he  knew  of  no  books 
about  them.  Both  he  and  Corydon  had  come  from  fami 
lies  which  had  the  traditions  of  luxurious  living,  brought 
down  from  old  days  when  there  were  plenty  of  negro 
servants,  and  when  the  ladies  had  been  skilled  in  baking 
and  preserving,  and  the  men  with  chafing-dish  and 
punch-bowl.  At  his  grandfather's  table  Thyrsis  had 
been  wont  to  see  a  great  platter  of  fried  chicken  at 
one  end,  and  a  roast  beef  at  the  other,  and  a  cold  ham 
on  a  side  table;  and  he  had  hot  bread  three  times  a 


182  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

day,  and  cake  and  jam  and  ice-cream — and  he  had  been 
taught  to  believe  that  such  things  were  needed  to  keep 
up  one's  working-powers. 

But  now  he  had  read  how  Thoreau  had  lived  upon 
corn-meal  mush ;  and  he  and  Corydon  resolved  to 
patronize  the  less  expensive  foods.  The  price  of  meat 
and  eggs  and  butter  in  the  winter-time  was  in  truth 
appalling;  so  they  would  buy  potatoes  and  rice  and 
corn-meal  and  prunes  and  turnips.  They  paid  the  land 
lady  for  the  use  of  her  gas-range,  and  would  cook  a 
sauce-pan  full  of  some  one  of  these  things,  and  fill  up 
with  it  three  times  a  day.  Then,  at  intervals,  some 
one  would  invite  them  out  to  dinner;  and  because  they 
were  under-nourished  they  would  gorge  themselves — 
which  was  evidently  not  an  ideal  method  of  procedure. 
So  in  the  end  Thyrsis  made  up  his  mind  to  consult  a 
physician  about  it ;  and  this  was  a  visit  he  never  forgot 
— for  it  led  directly  to  the  most  momentous  events  of 
his  whole  lifetime. 

§  6.  THE  doctor  announced  that  he  had  a  little  dys 
pepsia,  and  gave  him  a  bottle  full  of  a  red  liquid  that 
would  digest  his  food.  Also  he  warned  him  to  eat  slowly, 
and  to  rest  after  meals.  And  Thyrsis,  after  thanking 
him,  had  started  to  go;  when  the  doctor,  who  was  an 
old  friend  of  both  families,  asked  the  question,  "How's 
Corydon?" 

"She's  pretty  well,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"And  are  you  expecting  any  children  yet  ?"  asked  the 
other,  with  a  smile. 

Thyrsis  started.     "Heavens,  no !"  he  said. 

"Why  not?"  asked  the  doctor. 

"We  aren't  going  to  have  any." 

"But  why?     Are  you  preventing  it?" 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED 

Thyrsis  hesitated  a  moment.  "We're  not  living  that 
way,"  he  said. 

The  doctor  stared  at  him.  "Come  here,  boy,"  he 
said,  "and  sit  down." 

Thyrsis  obeyed*. 

"Now  tell  me  what  you  mean,"  said  the  other. 

"I  mean  that  we — we're  just  brother  and  sister," 
said  Thyrsis. 

"But — why  did  you  get  married?" 

"We  got  married  because  we  wanted  to  study." 

"To  study  what?" 

"Well,  everything — music,  principally." 

"And  how  long  do  you  expect  to  keep  that  up?" 

"Oh,  for  a  good  many  years — until  we've  accom 
plished  something,  and  until  we've  got  some  money." 

And  the  doctor  sank  back  and  drew  his  breath.  "I 
don't  wonder  your  stomach's  out  of  order !"  he  said. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

But  the  man  did  not  answer  that  question.  Instead 
he  asked,  "Don't  you  realize  what  you'll  do  to  Cory- 
don?" 

"What?" 

^"You'll  wreck  her  whole  life — her  health,  to  begin 
with." 

^x"But   how,    doctor?      She's   perfectly   happy.      It's 
what  we  both  want  to  do." 

"But  doesn't  she  love  you?" 

"Why,  yes — but  not  that  way." 

The  doctor  smiled.     "How  do  you  know?"  he  asked. 

"Because — she's  told  me  so." 

"And  if  it  was  otherwise — do  you  think  she'd  tell 
you  that?" 

"Why,  of  course  she  would." 

"My  boy,"  said  the  man,  "she'd  die  first!" 


184  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis  was  staring  at  him,  amazed. 

"Let  me  tell  you  a  little  about  a  good  woman,"  said 
the  other.  "I've  been  married  for  thirty  years — really 
married,  I  mean ;  we've  got  five  children.  And  in  all 
those  thirty  years  my  wife  has  never  made  an  advance 
of  that  sort  to  me !" 

After  which  the  doctor  went  on  to  expound  his 
philosophy  of  sex.  "Love  is  just  a  little  thing  to  you," 
he  said ;  "you've  got  your  books  and  your  career.  And 
you  want  it  to  be  the  same  with  Corydon — you've  suc 
ceeded  in  persuading  her  that  that's  what  she  wants 
also.  You're  going  to  make  her  a  copy  of  yourself ! 
But  you  simply  can't  do  it,  boy — she's  a  woman.  And 
a  woman's  one  interest  in  the  world  is  love — it's  every 
thing  in  life  to  her,  the  thing  she's  made  for.  And  if 
you  deprive  her  of  love,  whole  love,  I  mean,  you  wreck 
her  entirely.  Just  now  is  the  time  when  she  ought  to 
be  having  her  children,  if  she's  ever  to  have  any — and 
you're  trying  to  satisfy  her  with  music  and  philosophy  !" 

"But,"  cried  Thyrsis,  horrified,  "I  know  she  doesn't 
feel  that  way  at  all !" 

"Maybe  not,"  said  the  other.  "Her  eyes  are  not 
opened.  It's  your  business  to  open  them.  What  are 
you  a  man  for?" 

"But— she's  all  right  as  she  is " 

"Isn't  she  nervous?" 

"Why,  yes — perhaps — 

"Isn't  she  sometimes  melancholy?  And  doesn't  she 
like  you  to  kiss  her?  Doesn't  she  show  she's  happy 
when  you  hold  her  in  your  arms." 

Thyrsis  sat  mute. 

"You  see!"  said  the  other,  laughing.  "The  girl  is 
in  love  with  you,  and  you  haven't  sense  enough  to  know 
it." 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  185 

Again  Thyrsis  could  find  no  words.  "But  if  we  had 
a  child  it  would  ruin  us !"  he  cried,  wildly.  "I've  not 
a  cent,  and  my  whole  career's  at  stake !" 

"Well,"  said  the  other,  "if  it's  as  bad  as  that,  don't 
have  any  children  yet." 

"But — but  how  can  we?" 

"Don't  you  know  how  to  control  it?" 

Thyrsis  was  staring  at  him,  open-eyed.  "Why,  no !" 
he  said. 

"Good  lord !"  laughed  the  other.  "Where  have  you 
been  keeping  yourself?" 

And  then  the  doctor  proceeded  to  explain  to  him 
the  "artificial  sterilization  of  marriage."  No  whisper 
of  such  a  thing  had  ever  come  to  the  boy  before,  and 
he  could  hardly  credit  his  ears.  But  the  doctor  spoke 
of  it  as  a  man  of  the  world,  to  whom  it  was  a  matter 
of  course ;  he  went  into  detail  as  to  the  various  methods 
that  people  used.  And  when  finally  Thyrsis  rose  to 
leave  he  patted  him  indulgently  on  the  shoulder,  and 
laughed,  "Go  home  to  your  wife,  my  boy!" 

§  7.  THE  effect  of  this  conversation  upon  Thyrsis 
was  alarming  to  him.  At  first  he  tried  to  put  the  thing 
aside,  as  being  something  utterly  inconceivable  between 
him  and  Corydon.  But  it  would  not  be  put  aside. 

The  doctor  had  planted  his  seed  with  cunning.  If 
he  had  told  Thyrsis  that  he  was  (jping  harm  to  himself, 
Thyrsis  would  have  said  that  it  was  not  true,  and  stood 
by  it;  for  he  knew  about  himself.  But  the  man  had 
made  his  statements  about  Corydon — and  how  could  he 
be  sure  about  Corydon? 

The  crucial  point  was  that  it  set  him  to  thinking 
about  her  in  this  new  way;  a  way  which  he  had  not 
dreamed  of  previously.  And  when  once  he  had  begun 


186  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

to  think  about  her  so,  he  found  he  could  not  stop.  For 
hitherto  in  his  life,  whenever  he  had  thought  of  passion, 
it  had  been  as  a  temptation ;  he  had  known  that  it  was 
wrong,  and  all  that  was  best  in  him  had  risen  up  to 
oppose  it.  But  now  all  that  was  changed — the  image 
of  Corydon  the  doctor  had  called  up  was  one  that 
broke  down  all  resistance,  and  left  him  at  the  mercy 
of  his  impulses. 

These  impulses  awoke — and  with  a  suddenness  and 
force  that  terrified  him.  He  thought  of  her  as  his 
wife,  and  this  thought  was  like  a  rush  of  flame  upon 
him.  His  manhood  leaped  up,  and  cried  aloud  for  its 
rights.  He  discovered,  almost  instantly,  that  he  loved 
her  thus,  that  he  desired  her  completely.  This  was 
true  now,  and  it  had  been  true  from  the  beginning;  he 
had  been  a  fool  to  try  to  persuade  himself  otherwise. 
What  else  had  been  the  meaning  of  the  passionate  pro- 
bests  in  his  letters  to  her  ?  Of  the  images  he  had  used — 
of  carrying  her  away  in  his  arms,  of  breaking  her  to 
his  will?  And  she  loved  him,  too — she  desired  him  com 
pletely!  Why  else  had  it  been  that  those  passages 
were  precisely  the  ones  that  satisfied  her?  Why  was 
it  that  she  was  always  most  filled  with  joy  when  he  was 
aggressive  and  masterful? 

Ah  God,  what  an  inhuman  life  it  was  they  had  been 
living  all  these  months !  In  that  inevitable  proximity — 
shut  up  in  a  little  room !  And  with  the  most  intimate 
details  of  her  life  about  him — with  her  kisses  always 
upon  his  lips,  her  arms  always  about  him,  the  subtle 
perfume  of  her  presence  always  in  his  senses!  Was 
it  any  wonder  that  they  were  nervous  and  restless — 
always  sinking  into  tenderness,  and  exchanging  endear 
ments,  and  then  starting  up  to  scourge  themselves? 

He  went  home,  and  there  was   Corydon  preparing 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  187 

supper.  He  went  to  her  and  caught  her  in  his  arms 
and  kissed  her.  "I  love  you,  sweetheart!"  he  whis 
pered.  And  as  she  yielded  to  his  embraces,  he  kissed 
her  again  and  again,  upon  her  lips  and  upon  her 
cheeks  and  upon  her  neck.  Ah,  she  loved  him — else 
how  could  she  let  him  kiss  her  like  that ! 

But  it  was  not  so  quickly  that  the  inhibitions  of  a 
lifetime  could  be  overcome.  A  sudden  fear  took  hold 
of  Thyrsis.  What  was  he  doing?  No,  she  must  have 
no  idea  of  this — at  least  not  until  he  had  reasoned  it  out, 
until  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that  it  was  right. 

So  he  drew  back — and  as  he  did  so  he  noticed  in 
her  eyes  a  look  of  surprise.  He  did  not  often  greet 
her  in  that  way ! 

"I'm  hungry  as  a  bear,"  he  said,  to  change  the 
subject;  and  so  they  sat  down  to  their  supper. 

Thyrsis  had  important  writing  to  do  that  evening, 
and  he  tried  his  best,  but  he  could  not  put  his  mind 
upon  anything.  He  was  all  in  a  ferment.  He  pleaded 
that  he  had  to  think  about  his  work,  and  went  out  for 
a  long  walk.  ** 

A  storm  was  raging,  and  the  icy  gale  beat  upon  him. 
It  buffeted  him,  it  flung  him  here  and  there;  and  he 
set  himself  to  fight  it,  he  drove  his  way  through  it, 
lusty  and  exultant.  And  music  surged  within  him, 
lusty  and  exultant  music.  All  the  pent-up  passion  of 
his  lifetime  awoke  in  him,  the  blood  ran  hot  in  his 
veins ;  from  some  hidden  portion  of  his  being  came 
wave  after  wave  of  emotion,  sweeping  him  away — and 
he  spread  his  wings  to  it,  he  rose  to  the  heights  upon 
it,  he  laughed  and  sang  aloud  in  the  glory  of  it.  He 
had  known  such  hours  in  his  own  soul's  life,  but  never 
anything  like  it  with  Corydon.  He  cried  out,  what  a 
child  he  had  been!  He  had  taken  her,  he  had  sought 


Hf8 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 


to  shape  her  to  his  will ;  and  he  had  failed,  she  was  not 
yet  his — and  all  because  he  had  left  unused  the  one 
great  power  he  had  over  her,  the  one  great  hold  he 
Had  upon  herT^  But  now  it  would  be  changed — she 
should  have  him!  And  as  he  battled  on  with  the  ele 
ments  there  came  to  him  Goethe's  poem  of  passion : 

"Dem  Schnee,  dem  Regen, 
Dem  Wind   entgegen!" 

§  8.  So  for  hours  he  went.  But  when  he  had  come 
home,  and  stood  in  the  vestibule,  stamping  the  snow 
from  him,  there  came  a  reaction.  It  was  Corydon  he 
had  been  thinking  of — Corydon,  the  gentle  and  inno 
cent  !  How  could  he  say  such  things  to  her  ?  How  could 
he  hint  of  them?  Why,  he  would  fill  her  with  terror! 
It  was  not  to  be  thought  of! 

He  went  upstairs,  and  found  that  she  was  asleep. 
So  he  crept  into  his  little  bunk;  but  sleep  would  not 
come  to  him.  The  image  of  her  haunted  him.  He 
listened  to  her  breathing — he  was  as  close  to  her  as 
that,  and  still  she  was  not  his ! 

It  was  nearly  day  before  he  slept,  and  so  he  awoke 
tired  and  restless.  And  then  came  rage  at  himself — 
he  went  out  and  walked  again,  and  stormed  and  scolded. 
He  would  not  permit  this,  he  had  work  to  do.  And  he 
made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  not  allow  himself  to 
think  about  the  matter  for  three  days.  By  that  time 
the  truth  would  be  clearer  to  him ;  and  he  meant  to 
settle  this  question  with  his  reason,  and  not  with  his 
blind  desire. 

He  adhered  to  his  resolution  firmly.  But  when  the 
three  days  were  past,  and  he  tried  to  think  about  it, 
it  was  only  to  be  swept  away  in  another  storm  of  emo- 


THE    BAIT   IS    SEIZED  189 

tion.  It  seemed  that  the  more  tightly  he  pent  this 
river  up,  the  fiercer  was  its  rush  when  finally  it  broke 
loose.  For  always  his  will  was  paralyzed  by  that  sug 
gestion  that  he  might  be  doing  harm  to  Corydon ! 

At  last  he  made  up  his  mind  that  he  must  speak  to 
her;  and  one  afternoon  he  came  and  knelt  beside  her 
and  put  his  arms  about  her.  "Sweetheart,"  he  said, 
"I've  something  to  ask  you  about." 

Now  to  Corydon  the  mind  of  Thyrsis  was  like  an 
open  book.  For  days  she  had  known  that  something 
was  disturbing  him.  But  also  she  had  known  that  he 
was  not  ready  to  tell  her.  "What  is  it?"  she  asked. 

"It's  something  very  important,"  he  said. 

"Yes,  dear." 

"You  know,  I  went  to  see  the  doctor  the  other  day." 

"Yes." 

icAnd  he  told  me — he  thinks  we  are  doing  each  other 
harm  by  the  way  weTare  living." 

"What  way,  Thyrsis?" 

"By  not  being  really  married.  He  says  you  are 
suffering  because  of  it." 

"But  Thyrsis!"  she  cried,  in  astonishment.  "I'm 
not!" 

"He  says  you  wouldn't  know  it,  Corydon.  It  would 
keep  you  nervous  and  upset." 

"But  dear,"  she  said,  "I'm  perf  ectly.  happy !" 

"Are  you  sure  of  it?" 

"Perfectly  sure." 

"And — and  if  it  was  ever  otherwise — you  would  tell 
me?" 

"Why,  yes." 

"And  are  you  sure  of  that?" 

She  hesitated;  and  when  she  tried  to  answer,  Her 
voice  was  a  whisper — "I  think  so,  dear." 


190  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

There  was  a  pause.  "Thyrsis,"  she  exclaimed,  sud 
denly,  "I  would  have  a  child!" 

"No,  you  needn't,"  he  said;  and  he  told  her  what 
the  doctor  had  said. 

It  was  quite  as  new  to  her  as  it  had  been  to  him,  and 
even  more  startling.  "I  see,"  she  said,  in  a  low  voice. 

"Listen,  Corydon,"  he  whispered,  "do  you  think  you 
love  me  at  all  that  way?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered.  "I  never  thought  of 
such  a  thing." 

"Do  you  think  you  could  learn  to  love  me  so?" 

"How  can  I  tell,  Thyrsis?  It's  so  strange  to  me.  It 
— it  frightens  me." 

He  looked  up  at  her;  and  he  saw  that  a  flush  was 
mottling  her  throat,  and  spreading  over  her  cheeks. 
He  saw  the  wild  look  in  her  eyes  also ;  and  he  turned 
away. 

"Very  well,  dearest,"  he  said.  "I  don't  want  to 
disturb  you." 

So  he  tried  to  go  back  to  his  work.  But  he  could  not 
do  his  real  work  at  all.  He  could  practice  the  violin 
or  read  German  with  Corydon,  but  when  he  tried  to 
plan  his  new  book — that  involved  turning  his  thoughts 
loose  to  graze  in  a  certain  pasture,  and  they  would  not 
stay  in  that  pasture,  but  jumped  the  fence  and  came 
back  to  her.  And  so  he  found  himself  taking  more 
long  journeys,  in  which  he  walked  in  the  midst  of  the 
storm  of  his  desire. 

So,  of  course,  all  the  former  naturalness  was  gone 
between  them.  No  longer  could  they  kiss  and  toy  with 
one  another  as  children  in  a  fairy-world.  They  had 
suddenly  become  man  and  woman — fighting  the  age 
long  duel  of  sex.  They  would  talk  about  the  question ; 
and  the  more  they  talked  about  it,  the  more  it  came 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  191 

to  dominate  the  thoughts  of  both  of  them;  and  this 
broke  down  the  barriers  between  them — Thyrsis  be 
came  bolder,  and  more  open  in  his  speech.  He  lost  his 
awe  of  her  maidenhood  and  her  innocence — he  wooed 
her,  he  lured  her  on;  he  rejoiced  in  his  power  to  agi 
tate  her,  to  startle  her,  to  speak  to  her  about  secret 
things.  He  would  clasp  her  in  his  arms  and  shower 
his  kisses  upon  her ;  and  she  would  yield  to  him,  almost 
fainting  with  bliss — and  then  shrink  from  him  in  sud 
den  alarm. 

Then  he  would  go  out  into  the  night  and  battle  again 
with  the  wintry  winds.  That  frightened  shrinking  of 
hers  puzzled  him.  Everything  was  so  strange  to  him; 
and  how  could  he  be  sure  what  was  right?  He  wanted 
to  do  what  was  right,  with  all  his  soul  he  wanted  it; 
if  he  were  to  do  wrong,  or  to  make  her  think  less  of 
him,  he  could  never  forgive  himself  all  his  life.  But 
then  would  come  the  wild  surge  of  his  longing,  and  his 
man's  power  would  cry  out  within  him.  It  was  his 
business  to  overcome  her  shrinking,  to  compel  her  to 
yield.  The  question  of  the  doctor  rang  in  his  ears  as 
a  taunt — "Why  are  you  a  man  ?"  Why  was  he  a  man  ? 

§  9.  IN  the  end  these  emotions  reached  a  point 
where  Thyrsis  could  no  longer  bear  them.  They  were 
a  torment  to  him,  they  deprived  him  of  all  rest  and 
sleep.  One  afternoon  he  had  held  her  a  long  time  in 
his  arms,  and  it  hurt  him ;  he  turned  away,  and  put  his 
hands  to  his  forehead.  "Dearest,"  he  cried,  "I  can't 
stand  this  any  longer !" 

"Why?"  she  asked.     "What  do  you  mean?" 
"I  mean  it's  just  tearing  me  to  pieces !" 
She   stared  at  him  in   fright.      "Thyrsis!"   she  ex 
claimed.     "You  are  unhappy !" 


192  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

He  sunk  down  upon  the  bed  and  hid  his  face  in  his 
arms.  "Yes,"  he  whispered,  "I  am  unhappy !" 

And  so,  all  at  once,  he  broke  down  her  resistance. 
What  had  swayed  him  had  been  the  thought  of  her  suf 
fering  ;  and  the  thought  of  his  suffering  now  conquered 
her. 

Only  she  did  not  take  days  to  debate  it.  She  fled 
to  him  instantly,  and  wrapped  her  arms  about  him. 

"Thyrsis,"  she  whispered,  "listen  to  me!  I  had  no 
idea  of  that !" 

"No,  sweetheart,"  he  said.  "I'm  sorry — I'm  ashamed 
of  myself— 

"No,  no !"  she  cried,  vehemently.  "Don't  say  that ! 
I  love  you,  Thyrsis  !  I  love  you,  heart  and  soul !" 

He  turned  and  gazed  at  her  with  his  haggard  eyes. 

"I  will  do  anything  for  you,"  she  rushed  on.  "You 
shall  have  me !  I  will  be  your  wife !" 

Then,  however,  as  he  clasped  her  to  him,  there  came 
once  more  the  shrinking.  "Only  give  me  a  little  time, 
dear,"  she  whispered.  "Let  me  get  used  to  it.  Let  it 
come  naturally." 

But  the  only  way  he  could  have  given  her  time  would 
have  been  to  go  away.  Here  he  was,  in  her  room — with 
every  reminder  of  her  about  him,  with  every  incitement 
to  his  desire.  And  he  had  but  two  things  to  choose 
between — to  go  out  and  walk  and  think  about  her,  or  to 
come  home  and  sit  with  her  and  talk  about  their  love. 

They  had  their  supper,  and  then  again  she  was  in  his 
arms.  He  told  her  about  this  trouble — he  showed  how 
the  love  of  her  was  consuming  him.  Far  into  the  night 
they  sat  talking,  and  he  poured  out  his  heart  to  her, 
he  bore  her  with  him  to  the  mountain-tops  of  his  de 
sire.  He  took  down  a  book  of  Spenser's,  and  read  her 
the  "Epithalamium" ;  he  read  her  Shelley's  "Epip- 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  193 

sychidion,"  which  they  both  loved.  All  the  power  of 
Thyrsis'  genius  was  turned  now  to  passion,  and  the 
hidden  forces  of  him  were  revealed  as  never  had  they 
been  revealed  to  her  before.  He  became  eloquent ;  he 
talked  to  her  as  he  had  lived  with  himself;  he  awed 
her  and  frightened  her,  as  he  had  that  evening  upon  the 
hill-top.  Then  at  last,  as  the  tide  of  his  feeling  swept 
him  away  again,  he  clasped  her  to  him  tightly,  and  hid 
his  face  in  her  neck.  "I  love  you!  Oh,  I  love  you!" 
he  cried. 

She  had  sunk  back  and  closed  her  eyes.  "My 
Thyrsis !"  she  whispered. 

"You  love  me?"  he  asked.     "You  are  quite  sure?" 
"I  am  quite  sure!"  she  said. 

He  kissed  her;  again  and  again  he  kissed  her,  until 
he  had  made  sure  of  her  desire.  Then  suddenly,  he 
began  with  trembling  fingers  to  unfasten  the  neck  of 
her  dress. 

For  a  moment  she  did  not  comprehend  what  he  meant. 
Then  she  gave  a  start.  "Thyrsis !"  she  cried. 

And  she  sprang  up,  staring  at  him  with  fright  in 
her  eyes. 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked. 

"Thyrsis !"  she  gasped.  "What— what  were  you  go 
ing  to  do?" 

And  at  her  question,  shame  swept  over  him.  He  was 
horrified  at  himself.  How  could  he  find  words  to  tell 
her  what  he  had  been  going  to  do? 

He  turned  away  with  a  moan,  and  put  his  hands  over 
his  face.     "Oh  God,  I  can't  stand  this !"  he  exclaimed. 
Suddenly  he  went  to  his  hat  and  coat.     "I  must  go 
out !"  he  said. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  cried  Corydon. 


194  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I  mean  I've  got  to  go  somewhere!"  he  replied.  "I 
can't  stand  it — I  can't  stay  here." 

"Thyrsis !"  she  cried,  wildly.  And  she  sprang  to  him 
and  flung  her  arms  about  him.  "No,  no!"  she  cried. 
"No !" 

"But  what  am  I  to  do?" 
"Wait!     Wait!" 

And  she  pressed  him  tightly  to  her.     "Thyrsis !"  she 
whispered.      "Can't    you    understand?      Don't    be    so 
stupid,  dear !" 
"Stupid!" 

"Yes,  sweetheart — can't  you  see?  I'm  only  a  child! 
And  it's  so  strange!  It  frightens  me!  Try  to  realize 
how  I  feel!" 

"But  what  am  I  to  do?" 

"Do  ?  Why  you  must  make  me,  Thyrsis !"  And  as 
slie  said  this  she  hid  her  face  upon  his  shoulder  and 
sobbed.  "You  are  a  man,  Thyrsis,  you  are  a  man,  and 
I  am  only  a  girl!  Do  what  you  want  to!  Don't  pay 
any  attention  to  me !" 

And  those  words  to  Thyrsis  were  like  the  crashing 
of  a  peal  of  thunder.  He  clutched  her  to  him,  with  a 
force  that  crushed  her,  that  made  her  cry  out.  The 
soul  of  the  cave-man  awoke  in  him — he  lifted  his  mate 
in  his  arms  and  bore  her  away  to  a  secret  place. 

"Put  down  the  light,"  she  whispered,  and  he  did  this. 
And  then  again  he  began  to  unfasten  her  dress. 

She   submitted   at  first,   she  let   him  have  his   way. 
But  later,  when  his  hands  touched  the  soft  garment  on 
her  bosom,  he  felt  a  sharp  tremor  pass  through  her. 
"Thyrsis !"  she  whispered. 
"What  is  it?"  he  asked. 
"Wait  dear,  wait!" 
"Why  wait  ?"  he  cried. 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  195 

"Just  a  moment — please,  dear  !" 

But  he  answered  her — "No  !     Not  a  moment !    No !" 

She  clung  to  him,  trembling,  pleading.  "Please, 
dearest,  please!  I'm  afraid,  Thyrsis." 

But  nothing  could  stop  him  now.  She  was  his — his 
to  do  what  he  pleased  with !  And  he  would  bend  her  to 
his  will!  The  voice  of  his  manhood  shouted  aloud  to 
him  now,  and  it  was  like  the  clashing  of  wild  cymbals 
in  his  soul. 

He  went  on  with  what  he  was  doing.  She  shrunk 
away  from  him,  but  he  followed  her,  he  held  her  fast. 

Then  she  began  to  sob — "Oh  Thyrsis,  wait — spare 
me!  I  can't  bear  it!  No,  Thyrsis — no!" 

But  he  answered  her,  "Be  still!  I  love  you!  You 
are  mine."  And  for  every  sob  and  every  shudder  and 
every  moan  of  fear  he  had  but  one  response — "I  love 
you!  You  are  mine!" 

He  knew  that  he  loved  her  now — and  he  knew  what 
his  love  meant.  Before  this  they  had  been  strangers ; 
but  now  he  would  penetrate  to  the  secret  places,  to  the 
holy  of  holies  of  her  being. 

Never  in  all  his  life  had  Thyrsis  known  woman.  To 
him  woman  had  been  the  supreme  mystery  of  life,  a 
creature  of  awe  and  sacredness — not  to  be  handled, 
scarcely  even  to  be  thought  about.  Now  the  awful  ban 
was  lifted,  the  barriers  were  down ;  what  had  been  hid 
den  was  revealed,  what  had  been  forbidden  was  per 
mitted.  So  all  -the  chained  desire  of  a  lifetime  drove 
him  on;  it  was  almost  more  than  he  could  bear.  The 
touch  of  her  warm  breasts,  the  faint  perfume  of  her 
clothing,  the  pressure  of  her  soft,  white  limbs — these 
things  set  every  nerve  of  him  a-tremble,  they  turned 
a  madness  loose  in  him.  A  blinding  whirl  of  emotion 
seized  him,  he  was  like  a  leaf  swept  away  in  a  gale; 


196  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  words  came  now  in  wild  sobs,  "I  love  you!     I  love 
you!" 

So  with  quivering  fingers  he  stripped  her  before  him ; 
and  she  crouched  there,  cowering  and  weeping.  He  took 
her  in  his  arms ;  and  that  clasp  there  was  no  misunder 
standing,  for  all  the  mastery  of  his  will  was  in  it.  Nor 
did  she  try  to  resist  him — she  lay  still,  but  shaking  like 
a  leaf,  and  choking  with  sobs.  And  so  it  was  that  he 
wreaked  his  will  upon  her. 

§  10.  AND  then  came  the  reaction — the  most  awful 
experience  of  his  life.  Thyrsis  was  sitting  upon  the 
bed,  and  staring  in  front  of  him,  dazed.  He  was  ex 
hausted,  faint,  shuddering  with  horror.  "Oh,  my  God, 
my  God !"  he  whispered. 

What  had  he  done?  Corydon,  the  gentle  and  pure 
— she  had  trusted  herself  to  him,  and  how  had  he  treated 
her?  He  had  tortured  her,  he  had  defiled  her!  Oh,  it 
was  sickening ;  brutal,  like  a  butchery !  He  sunk  down 
in  a  heap,  moaning,  "My  God !  I  can't  bear  it !  I  can't 
bear  it!" 

And  then  a  strange  thing  happened — the  strangest 
of  all  strange  things !  An  unforeseeable,  an  unimagin 
able  thing ! 

Corydon  had  started  up,  and  was  listening;  and  now 
suddenly  he  felt  her  arms  stealing  about  him. 
"Thyrsis!"  she  whispered.  "Thyrsis!" 

"Oh,  what  shall  I  do?"  he  sobbed. 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"Oh,  it  was  so  horrible !  horrible !" 

"Thyrsis!"  she  panted,  swiftly.     "Don't  say  that!" 

"How  could  I  have  done  it?"  he  rushed  on.  "What 
a  monster  I  am !" 

"No!    no!"     she    cried.       "You    don't    understand, 


THE    BAIT    IS    SEIZED  197 

Thyrsis!  I  love  you!  Don't  you  know  that  I  love 
you?" 

And  she  tightened  her  clasp  about  him,  she  stole  into 
his  arms  again.  "Forgive  me !"  she  whispered.  "Please, 
please — forgive  me,  Thyrsis  !" 

He  stared  at  her,  dazed.     "Forgive  you?" 

"I  had  no  right  to  behave  like  that!"  she  cried.  "I 
was  afraid — I  couldn't  control  myself.  But  oh,  Thyrsis, 
I  love  you !" 

And  she  pressed  herself  upon  him  convulsively ;  she 
was  troubled  no  longer.  "Yes !"  she  panted.  "Yes ! 
I  don't  mind  it  any  more !  I  am  yours !  I  am  yours ! 
You  may  do  whatever  you  please  to  me,  Thyrsis — I 
love  you !" 

She  covered  him  with  kisses — his  face,  his  neck,  his 
body.  She  drew  him  down  to  her  again,  whispering 
in  ecstasy,  "My  husband!"" 

He  was  lost  in  amazement.  Could  this  be  Corydon, 
the  gentle  and  shrinking?  No,  she  was  gone;  and  in 
her  stead  this  creature  of  desire — tumultuous  and 
abandoned!  She  was  like  some  passion-goddess  out  of 
the  East,  shameless  and  terrible  and  destroying !  She 
was  like  a  tigress  of  the  jungle,  calling  in  the  night 
for  its  mate.  She  locked  him  fast  in  her  arms — she 
was  swept  away  in  a  whirlwind  of  emotion,  as  he  had 
been  swept  before.  And  all  her  being  rose  up  in  one 
song  of  exultation — "Mine!  Mine!  Mine!  Mine!" 

"Ah,  Thyrsis !"  she  cried.  "My  Thyrsis !  I  belong 
to  you  now !  You  can  never  escape  me  now !  You  can 
never  leave  me-^-my  love,  my  love !" 

And  as  Thyrsis  listened  to  this  song,  his  passion 
died.  Reason  awoke  again,  and  a  cold  fear  struck  into 
his  heart!  What  was  the  meaning  of  Ms? 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Long  hours  afterward,  as  she  lay,  half-asleep,  in  his 
arms,  she  felt  him  give  a  sudden  start  and  shudder. 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked. 

"Nothing,"  he  said — "I  just  happened  to  think  of 
something.  Something  that  frightened  me." 

"What  was  it?" 

"I  was  thinking,  dear — suppose  I  should  become 
domestic!" 


BOOK  VI 
THE  CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 


She  had  been  reading  m  the  little  cabm,  and  a  hush 
had  fallen  upon  them. 

"Yes,  thou  art  gone!    And  round  me  too  the  night 
In  ever-nearing  circle  weaves  her  shade." 

"Gone!"  she  said,  and  smiled  sadly.  "Where  is  he 
gone?" 

And  she  turned  the  page  and  read  again — 

"But  Thyrsis  nevermore  we  swains  shall  see; 
See  him  come  back,  and  cut  a  smoother  reed, 
And  blow  a  strain  the  world  at  last  shall  heed — 

For  Time,  not  Corydon,  hath  conquered  thee!" 

Then,  after  a  pause,  she  added,  "How  often  I  have 
remembered  those  words!  And  how  pitiful  they  are, 
when  I  remember  them!" 


§  1.  IT  was  a  tiny  cupboard  of  a  room  in  a  tene 
ment.  They  sat  upon  their  bed  to  eat,  and  they  hid 
their  soiled  dishes  beneath  it.  Dirty  children  screamed 
upon  the  avenue  in  front,  and  frowsy-headed  women 
and  wolfish  men  caroused  in  the  saloon  below.  Yet  here 
there  came  to  them  the  angel  with  the  flame-tipped 
wings,  and  here  they  dreamed  their  dream  of  wonder. 

In  the  glory  of  their  new-found  passion  all  life  be 
came  transfigured  to  them;  they  discovered  new  mean 
ing  in  the  most  trivial  actions.  There  was  no  corner  so 
obscure  that  they  might  not  come  upon  the  young  god 
hidden ;  they  might  touch  his  warm,  tender  flesh,  and 
hear  his  silvery  laughter,  and  thrill  with  the  wonder  of 
his  presence.  They  spoke  a  new  language,  full  of  fire 
and  color ;  they  read  new  meanings  in  each  other's 
eyes.  The  slightest  touch  of  hand  upon  hand,  or  of 
lips  to  lips,  was  enough  to  dissolve  them  in  tenderness 
and  delight. 

They  rejoiced  in  the  marvel  of  each  other's  being — 
in  the  glory  of  their  bodies,  newly  revealed.  To  Thyrsis 
especially  this  was  life's  last  miracle,  a  discovery  so 
fraught  with  bliss  as  to  be  a  continual  torment.  The 
incitements  that  were  hidden  in  the  softness  and  the 
odor  of  unbound  and  tumbled  hair;  the  exquisiteness 
of  maiden  breasts,  moulded  of  marble,  rosy-tipped ;  the 
soft  contour  of  snowy  limbs,  the  rhythmic  play  of  mov 
ing  muscles — to  dwell  amid  these  things,  to  possess 
them,  was  suddenly  to  discover  in  reality  what  before 
had  only  existed  in  the  realm  of  painting  and  sculpture. 

201 


202  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Corydon  also,  in  the  glow  of  his  delight,  of  his 
rapture  and  his  ravening  desire,  discovered  anew  the 
wonder  of  herself,  and  came  to  a  new  consciousness  of 
her  beauty.  She  would  stand  and  gaze  before  her,  with 
her  hands  upon  her  breasts,  and  her  head  flung  back, 
and  her  eyes  closed  in  ecstasy,  so  that  he  might  come 
to  her  and  kiss  her — might  kiss  her  again  and  again, 
might  touch  her  with  his  lover's  hands  and  clasp  her 
with  his  lover's  arms. 

In  most  of  these  things  she  was  his  teacher.  For 
Corydon  was  one  person,  in  body,  mind  and  soul;  in 
her  there  were  no  disharmonies,  no  warring  elements. 
His  friend  the  doctor  had  set  forth  his  idea  of  "a  good 
woman";  but  Corydon's  goodness  proved  to  be  after 
no  such  pattern.  Now  that  she  was  his,  she  was  his; 
she  belonged  to  him,  she  was  a  part  of  him,  and  there 
could  be  no  thought  of  a  secret  shame,  of  any  reserves 
or  hesitations.  Her  body  was  herself,  and  it  was  joy 
to  her;  it  was  joy  the  more,  because  she  could  give  it 
for  love;  and  she  sought  for  new  ways  to  utter  the 
completeness  of  her  giving. 

She  was  like  a  little  child  about  it — so  free,  so  spon 
taneous,  so  genuine;  Thyrsis  marvelled  at  her  utter 
naturalness.  For  himself,  in  the  midst  of  these  things, 
there  was  always  a  sense  of  the  strange  and  the  ter 
rible,  a  sense  of  penetrating  to  forbidden  mysteries ; 
but  Corydon  laughed  in  the  sunlight  of  utter  bliss — and 
she  laughed  most  at  him,  when  she  found  that  her 
simple  language  had  startled  him. 

For  the  maiden  out  of  ancient  Greece  was  now  be 
come  a  lover !  And  so  she  was  revealed  to  Thyrsis— 
she  who  might  have  marched  in  the  Panathenaic  proces 
sions,  with  one  of  the  sacred  vessels  in  her  hands,  or  run 
in  the  Attic  games,  bare-limbed  and  fearless.  So  he 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         203 

learned  to  think  of  her,  singing  in  the  myrtle  groves 
of  Mount  Hymettus,  or  walking  naked  in  the  moon 
light  in  Arcadian  meadows. 

So  he  thought  of  her  all  through  her  life,  whenever 
a  moment  of  joy  came  to  her — whenever,  for  instance, 
she  found  her  way  to  the  wrater.  They  had  dressed  her 
in  long  skirts  and  put  her  in  a  drawing-room — but 
Corydon  had  got  to  the  water  in  spite  of  them;  and 
all  that  any  Nereid  had  ever  known,  that  she  had 
known  from  the  time  the  waves  first  kissed  her  feet. 

And  so  it  was  also  with  love;  she  was  born  to  be 
a  priestess  of  love's  religion.  She  had  waited  for  this 
hour — that  she  might  take  his  hand,  and  lead  him  into 
the  temple,  and  teach  him  the  ritual.  It  was  a  ministry 
that  she  entered  upon  with  the  joy  of  all  her  being. 
"Ah,  let  me  teach  you  how  to  love !"  she  would  cry.  "Ah, 
let  me  teach  you  how  to  love!" 

*  Love  was  to  her  an  utter  blending  of  two  selves,  the 
losing  of  one's  personality  in  another's ;  it  meant  the 
forgetting  of  one's  self,  and  all  the  ends  of  self.  And 
Thyrsis  marvelled  at  the  glory  that  came  upon  her, 
at  each  new  rapture  she  discovered.  All  the  language 
of  lovers  was  known  to  her,  all  the  songs  of  lovers 
were  upon  her  lips: 

"Du  bist  mir  ewig, 
Bist  mir  immer — 
Erb  und  Eigen 
Bin  und  All!" 

Such  was  her  woman's  gift :  precious  beyond  all  treas 
ures  of  earth,  and  given  without  price  or  question. 
And  Thyrsis  trembled  as  he  realized  it ;  he  lived  upon  his 
knees  before  her,  and  floods  of  tenderness  welled  up  in 


204  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  heart.  How  utterly  she  trusted  him,  how  com 
pletely  she  belonged  to  him !  And  what  could  he  do  to 
show  himself  worthy  of  it — this  most  wonderful  dream 
of  his  life  come  true 

"If  someone  should  give  me  a  heart  to  keep, 
With  love  for  the  golden  key!" 

Yet,  amid  all  these  raptures,  Thyrsis  was  haunted 
by  ghosts  of  doubt.  Would  he  be  able  to  do  what  his 
heart  yearned  to  do?  Love  meant  so  much  to  her — 
and  could  it  mean  that  much  to  him?  Why  could  it 
not  be  to  him  the  complete  thing  it  was  to  her — why 
must  he  argue  and  wonder  and  fear? 

For  Thyrsis'  ancestors  had  not  dallied  in  Arcadian 
meadows.  They  had  come  from  the  wilds  of  Palestine 
and  the  deserts  of  Northern  Africa;  they  had  argued 
and  wondered  and  feared  in  Gothic  cloisters,  in  New 
England  meeting-houses ;  and  the  shadow  of  their  souls 
hung  over  him  still.  He  could  not  love  love  as  Corydon 
loved  it,  he  could  not  trust  it  as  she  trusted  it.  It  could 
never  seem  to  him  the  utterly  natural  thing — there  was 
always  a  fear  of  pollution,  a  hint  of  satiety,  a  thrill  of 
shame.  Directly  the  first  fires  of  passion  had  spent 
themselves,  these  anxieties  came  to  him ;  he  remembered 
how  in  his  virgin  youth  he  had  thought  of  passion — as 
of  something  strange  and  uncomfortable,  even  gro 
tesque,  suggesting  too  closely  a  kinship  with  the  ani 
mals.  So  he  noticed  that  his  feelings  always  waned 
before  Corydon's.  She  wished  him  to  linger — love 
meant  so  much  to  her ! 

Then  too,  the  code  of  passion  was  all  unknown  to 
him.  What  was  right  and  what  was  wrong?  When 
should  one  yield  to  desire,  and  when  should  one  re- 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         205 

strain  it?  To  Cory  don  such  questions  never  came — to 
her  there  was  no  such  possibility  as  excess;  she  was 
complete  and  perfect,  and  nature  told  her.  If  there 
were  temptations  and  restraints  and  regrets,  they  were 
for  Thyrsis ;  and  he  had  to  keep  them  for  his  own 
secret,  he  could  ask  no  help  from  her.  For  he  discov 
ered  immediately  that  with  his  proud  imperiousness,  he 
could  not  endure  to  have  Corydon  refuse  herself  to  him. 
So  this  laid  a  new  burden  upon  him,  an  appalling  one. 
For  were  they  not  always  together — her  lips  always 
calling  him,  the  impulse  towards  her  always  with  him  ? 

There  was  another  circumstance — the  means  they  had 
to  take  to  prevent  the  consequences  of  their  love.  From 
the  very  first,  Thyrsis  had  shrunk  from  the  thought  of 
this ;  but  it  was  only  later  that  he  realized  how  much  it 
repelled  him.  It  offended  all  his  sense  of  economy  and 
purpose;  it  was  something  done,  and  at  the  same  time 
undone — and  so  it  had  in  it  the  essence  of  all  futility 
and  wrongness.  It  took  from  passion  its  meaning  and 
its  excuse;  and  yet  he  could  not  say  this  to  Corydon; 
and  he  knew  also  that  he  could  no  longer  do  without 
her.  He  was  bound — bound  fast!  And  every  hour 
his  chains  would  become  tighter;  what  was  now  spon 
taneous  joy  would  become  a  habit — a  thing  like  eating 
and  sleeping,  a  new  and  humiliating  necessity  of  the 
flesh! 

§  2.  SUCH  were  their  problems.  They  might  have 
solved  them  all,  perhaps — had  they  only  had  time.  But 
others  came  crowding  upon  them,  others  still  more  in 
sistent  and  perplexing.  -The  world  was  pressing  them, 
jealous  of  their  dream  of  delight. 

Their  little  fund  of  money  was  gone,  and  so  Thyrsis 
went  back  to  his  hack-work.  All  day  he  sat  by  the 


206  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

window  and  slaved  at  it,  while  Corydon  lay  upon  the 
bed  and  read,  or  wandered  about  the  park  by  herself. 
Thyrsis'  burden  was  twice  as  heavy  now,  for  he  had  to 
earn  for  two;  and  when  in  the  ecstasies  of  love  she 
cried  out  to  him  that  she  was  his  forever,  the  cruel 
mockery  of  circumstance  translated  this  to  mean  that 
he  would  forever  have  to  earn  for  two ! 

He  wrote  more  book-reviews,  and  peddled  them  about ; 
sometimes  he  was  forced  to  exchange  them  for  books 
he  reviewed,  and  then  to  sell  the  books  for  twenty  or 
thirty  cents  apiece.  He  wrote  up  some  ideas  for  po 
litical  cartoons,  and  got  three  dollars  for  one  of  them. 
He  wrote  a  parody  upon  a  popular  poem,  and  got  six 
dollars  for  that.  He  met  a  college  friend,  just  re 
turned  from  a  trip  in  the  Andes,  and  he  patiently  col 
lected  the  material  for  a  narrative,  and  sold  it  to  a 
minor  magazine  for  fifteen  dollars. 

And  meanwhile  he  toiled  furiously  at  another  pot 
boiler,  a  tale  of  Hessians  and  Tories  and  a  red-cheeked 
and  irresistible  revolutionary  heroine,  to  fill  the  insa 
tiable  maw  of  the  readers  of  the  "Treasure  Chest."  On 
one  occasion,  when  everything  went  wrong,  Corydon  took 
the  half-dozen  solid  silver  coffee-spoons  and  the  heavy 
gold-plated  berry-spoon  which  had  constituted  her  out 
fit  of  wedding-presents,  and  sold  them  to  a  nearby 
jeweler  for  two  dollars  and  a  quarter. 

But  through  all  this  bitter  struggle  they  looked  for 
ward  to  a  glorious  ending.  In  April  the  book  would 
be  out — and  then  they  would  be  free!  They  would  go 
away  to  the  country — perhaps  to  the  little  cabin  of 
last  summer !  Ah,  how  they  dreamed  of  that  cabin,  how 
they  hungered  for  it!  They  pictured  it,  covered  in 
snow,  with  the  ice-bound  brook  in  front  of  it — both 


THE    CORDS    ARE    TIGHTENED         207 

the  cabin  and  the  brook  asleep,  and  dreaming  of  the 
spring-time. 

Thyrsis  was  dreaming  of  it  also,  with  tears  in  his 
eyes  and  a  mighty  passion  in  his  heart;  for  his  new 
book  was  calling  to  him — he  had  to  fight  hard  to  keep 
it  from  taking  possession  of  his  thoughts  and  driving 
the  pot-boilers  out  of  the  temple. 

There  came  the  joyful  excitement  of  reading  the 
proofs  of  his  book;  also  of  inspecting  the  cover-de 
sign,  and  the  sample  of  the  paper,  and  the  "dummy". 
And  then — it  was  two  weeks  from  now !  Then  it  was 
only  ten  days — then  only  one  week.  And  finally  the 
raptures  of  the  first  sample  copy ! 

It  was  time  the  publishers  had  begun  to  advertise  it, 
and  Thyrsis  went  to  see  Mr.  Taylor  about  the  matter. 
Mr.  Taylor  was  vague  in  his  replies.  Then  came  publi 
cation-day,  and  still  no  advertisements;  and  Thyrsis 
called  again,  and  insisted  and  expostulated,  and  learned 
to  his  consternation  that  they  were  not  going  to  ad 
vertise  it ;  the  season  was  a  bad  one,  the  firm  had  met 
with  unexpected  expenses,  and  so  on.  When  Thyrsis  re 
minded  them  of  their  promises,  and  threatened  and 
stormed,  Mr.  Taylor  informed  him  quietly  that  there 
was  nothing  in  the  contract  about  advertising. 

So  Thyrsis  went  home,  and  tried  to  forget  his  rage 
in  the  work  of  disposing  of  his  hundred  copies.  He 
had  prepared  himself  for  the  possibility  of  everything 
else  failing,  but  here  he  had  a  plan  whereby  he  felt  that 
his  deliverance  was  assured.  He  had  made  up  a  list 
of  a  hundred  of  the  best-known  men  of  letters  in  the 
country — college  presidents  and  professors,  editors  and 
clergymen,  novelists  and  poets  and  critics ;  and  he  had 
done  more  hack-work,  and  earned  the  twenty  dollars 
it  would  take  to  send  to  each  of  them  a  copy  of  the 


208  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

book,  together  with  his  manifesto,  and  a  little  type 
written  note.  This,  he  felt,  would  make  certain  of  the 
book's  being  read ;  and  once  let  the  book  be  read  by  the 
real  leaders  of  the  country's  thought,  and  his  siege 
would  be  at  an  end! 

So  the  packages  went  to  the  post-office,  freighted  with 
the  burden  of  his  hopes  and  longings.  And  two  or  three 
times  a  week  Thyrsis  went  to  see  his  publishers,  and 
find  out  how  the  book  was  going.  He  was  never  able  to 
ascertain  just  what  they  were  doing  with  it,  or  how 
they  expected  to  sell  it ;  Mr.  Taylor  would  tell  him 
vaguely  that  it  was  doing  fairly  well — the  season  was 
"slow",  and  he  must  give  the  book  time  to  "catch  on". 

And  then  came  the  reviews.  A  clipping-bureau  had 
written,  offering  to  furnish  them  at  five  cents  apiece; 
and  this  was  moderate,  considering  that  there  were  only 
a  dozen  altogether.  Most  of  these  were  from  unim 
portant  out-of-town  papers,  whose  book-reviews  are 
written  by  the  high-school  nieces  and  the  elderly  maiden- 
aunts  of  the  publishers.  Of  the  metropolitan  news 
papers  and  literary  organs,  only  three  noticed  the  book 
at  all;  and  two  of  these  gave  perfunctory  mention, 
evidently  made  up  from  the  publisher's  statement  on 
the  cover. 

The  third  writer  had  connected  the  book  with  the 
interview  in  the  "Morning  Howl",  and  he  wrote  a  bur 
lesque  review  of  it,  in  which  he  hailed  it  as  the  "Great 
American  Novel".  His  method  was  to  retell  the  story, 
quoting  the  most  highly-wrought  passages,  with  just 
enough  comment  to  keep  it  in  the  vein  of  farce.  To 
Thyrsis  this  mockery  came  like  a  blast  of  fire  in  the 
face;  he  did  not  know  that  it  was  the  regular  method 
of  the  newspaper — a  method  by  means  of  which  it  had 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         209 

made  itself  known  as  the  cleverest  and  most  readable 
paper  in  the  country. 

§  3.  ALL  this  was  the  harder  for  him,  because  it 
came  at  a  black  and  spectral  hour  of  his  life.  It  was 
not  enough  that  the  book  was  falling  flat,  and  that 
all  their  hopes  were  collapsing;  a  new  and  most  terrible 
calamity  befell  them.  For  three  months  now  they  had 
been  dissolved  in  the  bliss  of  their  young  dream  of 
love;  and  now  suddenly  had  come  a  thunderbolt,  split 
ting  the  darkness  about  them,  and  revealing  the  grim 
hand  of  Fate  closing  down ! 

For  several  years  of  her  life  Corydon  had  carried  a 
trying  burden — once  each  month  she  would  have  to  lie 
down  for  three  or  four  days  and  be  a  semi-invalid.  And 
last  month  this  had  not  happened ;  the  time  had  come 
and  gone,  and  she  was  as  wTell  as  ever.  She  had  told 
Thyrsis  about  it,  and  how  it  disturbed  her;  it  might 
mean  nothing,  it  had  happened  several  times  before  to 
her;  but  then  again — it  might  mean  that  she  had  con 
ceived. 

The  idea  had  been  too  frightful  to  contemplate, 
however,  and  they  had  put  it  aside.  It  was  not  possible 
— the  doctor  had  told  them  how  to  prevent  it;  he  had 
told  them  that  "everybody"  did  it,  and  that  they  could 
feel  safe. 

But  now  came  the  second  month ;  and  Corydon,  filled 
with  a  vague  terror,  waited  for  the  day.  And  horrible 
beyond  all  telling — the  day  came  and  went  once  more! 
And  two  days  came — three  days !  And  so  finally  Cory 
don  went  to  see  the  doctor. 

When  she  came  home  again,  and  entered  the  room, 
Thyrsis  saw  it  all  in  her  face,  without  her  uttering  a 


210  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

word.  He  went  sick,  all  at  once;  and  Corydon  sank 
down  upon  the  bed. 

"Well?"  he  asked,  in  a  hoarse  voice. 

"It's  true,"  she  said. 

"And  what  did  he  say?" 

"He  said — he  said  I  was  in  splendid  shape,  and  that 
I  would  have  a  fine  baby !" 

And  Thyrsis  stared  at  her,  and  then  suddenly  burst 
into  wild  laughter,  and  hid  his  head  in  his  arms.  Such 
was  their  mood  that  she  could  not  feel  sure  whether 
he  was  laughing  or  crying. 

Now,  indeed,  they  were  facing  the  reality  of  life.  All 
the  problems  with  which  they  had  ever  wrestled  were 
as  child's  play  to  this  problem ;  they  could  sit  and  read 
the  deadly  terror  in  each  other's  eyes.  Corydon's  lip 
was  trembling,  and  her  face  was  white  and  drawn  and 
old.  So  swiftly  had  fled  her  young  dream  of  joy! 

"Thyrsis,"  she  said,  in  a  low  voice,  "it  means  ruin!" 

"Yes,"  he  answered. 

And  she  clenched  her  hands  tightly.  "I  will  kill 
myself  first!"  she  whispered.  "I  will  not  drag  you 
down !" 

He  made  no  reply. 

"Listen,  Thyrsis,"  she  went  on.  "There  is  only  one 
thing  to  be  thought  of.  I  must  get  rid  of  it." 

"Get  rid  of  it?"  he  echoed.     "How?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said.     "But  women  often  do  it." 

"Fve  heard  of  it,"  he  replied.  "But  isn't  it  danger 
ous?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "and  I  don't  care." 

There   was   a   pause. 

"Why  don't  you  ask  the  doctor?"  he  inquired. 

"The  doctor?  There  was  no  use  us  asking  him, 
Thyrsis." 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

"Why   not?" 

"Because — he  doesn't  understand.  He  likes  babies. 
That's  his  business." 

They  argued  this.  But  in  the  end  Thyrsis  resolved 
that  he  must  see  the  doctor  himself.  He  must  see  him 
if  it  was  only  to  pour  out  his  anguish.  It  was  the 
doctor's  fault  that  this  fearful  accident  had  befallen 
them! 

But  the  boy  soon  saw  that  it  was  as  Corydon  had 
said,  there  was  nothing  to  be  gained  in  that  quarter. 
Babies  were  indeed  the  doctor's  business ;  they  were 
the  business  of  the  whole  world,  from  his  point  of  view. 
People  got  married  to  have  babies ;  they  were  in  the 
world  to  have  babies,  and  anything  else  was  just  non 
sense.  Nowadays  babies  were  the  only  excuse  that 
people  had  for  living — their  morality  began  and  ended 
with  them.  Moreover,  babies  were  fine  in  themselves ; 
they  were  beautiful  and  fat  and  jolly.  The  pagan 
old  gentleman  sang  a  very  paean  in  praise  of  babies — 
the  more  of  them  there  were,  the  more  laughter  upon 
earth.  v 

Also,  having  them  was  the  business  of  women — that, 
and  not  reading  German  poetry  and  playing  the  piano. 
They  all  made  a  little  fuss  at  the  outset,  but  then  they 
submitted,  and  they  soon  found  that  Nature  knew  more 
than  they.  Babies  completed  women's  lives,  they  settled 
their  nerves ;  they  gave  them  something  to  think  about, 
and  saved  them  from  hysteria  and  extravagance  and 
sentimentalism,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  ills  of  the  hour. 

Then  the  doctor  fixed  his  keen  eyes  upon  him.  "Are 
you  and  Corydon  thinking  about  an  abortion?"  he  de 
manded. 

"I — I  don't  know,"  stammered  Thyrsis.  The  word 
sounded  ugly. 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I  got  that  impression  from  her,"  said  the  other.1 
"And  now  let  me  tell  you — if  you  do  that,  it'll  be  some 
thing  you'll  never  forgive  yourself  for  as  long  as  you 
live.  In  the  first  place,  you  may  lose  your  wife.  It's 
a  very  dangerous  thing,  and  a  woman  is  seldom  the 
same  after  it.  You  might  make  it  impossible  for  her 
ever  to  have  a  child  again,  and  so  blast  her  whole  life. 
You'll  have  to  trust  her  in  the  hands  of  some  vile 
scoundrel — you  understand,  of  course,  that  it's  a 
crime  ?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"It's  a  crime  not  only  against  the  law — it's  a  crime 
against  God.  And  it's  the  curse  of  our  age !" 

There  was  a  pause. 

"What's  the  matter  with  Corydon,  anyway?"  de 
manded  the  doctor. 

"She's  so  young!"  cried  Thyrsis. 

"Nonsense!  She's  nineteen  now,  isn't  she?  And  she 
couldn't  be  in  better  condition." 

"But  she's  so  undeveloped — mentally,  I  mean." 

"There's  nothing  in  the  world  will  develop  her  like 
maternity.  And  can't  you  see  that  she  wants  the 
baby?" 

"Wants  it !"  shouted  Thyrsis. 

"Why,  of  course!  She's  dead  in  love  with  you,  boy. 
And  she  wants  the  baby !  Why  shouldn't  she  have  it  ?" 

"If  I  could  only  make  you  understand — "  protested 
Thyrsis,  feebly. 

"Yes !"  exclaimed  the  doctor.  "That's  what  they  all 
say !  Not  a  day  passes  that  some  woman  doesn't  sit 
in  this  office  and  say  it !  Each  case  is  different  from 
any  other  case  that  ever  was  or  could  be.  They  tell 
me  how  much  they  suffer,  and  what  a  state  their  nerves 
are  in,  and  how  busy  they  are,  and  how  poor  they  are 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

— their  social  duties,  and  their  artistic  duties,  and  their 
religious  duties,  and  their  philanthropic  duties !  And 
they  weep  and  wring  their  hands,  and  tell  me  agonizing 
stories,  and  they  offer  me  any  sum  I  could  ask — many 
a  time  I  might  earn  a  thousand  dollars  by  something 
that  wouldn't  take  me  ten  minutes,  if  only  I  didn't 
have  a  conscience! — Go  away,  boy,  and  get  those  ideas 
out  of  your  head !" 

§  4.  So  Thyrsis  went  away,  with  a  new  realization 
of  the  seriousness  of  his  position,  with  a  new  sense  of 
the  grip  in  which  he  was  fast.  It  was  a  conspiracy 
of  Nature,  a  conspiracy  of  all  the  world!  It  was  a 
Snare ! 

All  through  this  love-adventure,  even  when  most  un 
der  the  sway  of  his  emotions,  Thyrsis'  busy  mind  had 
been  groping  and  reaching  for  an  understanding  of 
it.  Little  by  little  this  had  come  to  him — and  now  the 
picture  was  complete.  He  had  beheld  the  last  scene 
of  the  panorama ;  he  had  got  to  the  moral  of  the  tale ! 

He  had  been  the  sport  of  cosmic  forces,  of  the  blind 
and  irresistible  reproductive  impulse  of  Nature.  Step 
by  step  he  had  been  driven,  he  had  played  his  part  ac 
cording  to  the  plan.  He  had  hesitated  and  debated  and 
resolved  and  decided — thinking  that  he  had  something 
to  do  with  it  all !  But  now  he  looked  back,  and  saw 
himself  as  a  leaf  swept  along  by  a  torrent.  And  all 
the  while  the  torrent  had  known  its  destination !  He  had 
had  many  plans  and  many  purposes,  but  always  Nature 
had  had  but  one  plan  and  one  purpose — which  was  the 
Child! 

Twelve  months  ago  Thyrsis  had  been  a  boy,  care 
free  and  happy,  rapt  in  his  dream  of  art ;  and  now  here 
he  was,  a  married  man,  with  the  cares  of  parenthood 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

on  his  shoulders !  If  anyone  had  told  him  that  such 
a  trick  could  be  played  upon  him,  he  would  have  laughed 
at  them.  How  confident  he  had  been — how  certain  of 
his  mastery  of  life !  And  now  he  was  in  the  Snare ! 

Dismayed  as  he  was,  Thyrsis  could  not  but  smile  as 
he  realized  it.  The  artist  in  him  appreciated  the  tech 
nique  of  the  performance.  How  cunningly  it  had  all 
been  managed — how  cleverly  the  device  had  been  hidden, 
how  shrewdly  the  bait  had  been  selected ! 

He  went  back  over  the  adventure.  What  a  fuss  he 
and  Corydon  had  made  about  it !  What  a  vast  amount 
of  posturing  and  preluding,  of  backing  and  filling! 
And  how  solemnly  they  had  taken  it — how  earnestly  they 
had  believed  in  the  game!  What  convictions  had 
weighed  upon  them,  what  exaltations  had  thrilled  them 
—two  pitiful  little  puppets,  set  here  and  there  by  un 
seen  hands!  Rehearsing  from  prologue  to  curtain  the 
age-long  drama,  the  drama  of  Sex  that  had  been  played 
from  the  beginning  of  the  world ! 

He  marvelled  at  the  prodigality  that  Nature  had  dis 
played — at  the  treasures  she  had  squandered  to  ac 
complish  her  purpose !  She  would  create  a  million  eggs 
to  make  one  salmon ;  and  she  had  created  a  million 
emotions  to  make  one  baby !  What  poems  she  had  writ 
ten  for  them — what  songs  she  had  composed  for  them ! 
She  had  emptied  the  cornucopiae  of  her  gifts  into  their 
lap !  She  had  strewn  the  pathway  with  roses  before 
them,  she  had  filled  their  mouths  with  honey,  and  their 
ears  with  the  sound  of  sweet  music ;  she  had  blinded 
them,  she  had  stunned  them,  she  had  sent  them  drunken 
and  reeling  to  their  fate ! 

And  the  elaborate  set  of  pretenses  and  illusions  that 
she  had  invented  for  them !  The  devices  to  lull  their 
suspicions — the  virtues  and  renunciations,  the  humili- 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         215 

ties  and  the  consecrations!  Corydon  had  been  fright 
ened  and  evasive;  Nature  had  made  him  suffer,  so  as 
to  break  her  down !  And  he  had  been  proud  and  de 
fiant  ;  and  so  Corydon,  the  meek  and  gentle,  had  been 
turned  into  a  heroine  of  revolt !  Nay,  worse  than  that ; 
those  very  powers  and  supremacies  that  he  had  thought 
were  his  protection — were  they  not,  also,  a  part  of  the 
Snare?  His  culture  and  his  artistry,  his  visions  and 
his  exaltations — what  had  they  been  but  a  lure  for 
the  female?  The  iris  of  the  burnished  dove,  the  ruff 
about  the  grouse's  neck,  the  gold  and  purple  of  the 
butterfly's  wing !  Even  his  genius,  his  miraculous,  in 
effable  genius — that  had  been  the  plume  of  the  par 
tridge,  the  crowning  glory  before  which  his  mate  had 
capitulated ! 

These  images  came  to  Thyrsis,  until  he  burst  into 
wild,  sardonic  laughter.  He  saw  himself  in  new  and 
grotesque  lights ;  he  was  the  peacock,  spreading  his 
gorgeousness  before  a  dazzled  and  wondering  world; 
he  was  the  young  rooster,  strutting  before  his  mate, 
and  thrilling  with  the  knowledge  of  his  own  import 
ance!  He  was  each  of  the  barnyard  creatures  by 
turn,  and  Corydon  was  each  of  the  fascinated  females. 
And  somewhere,  perhaps,  stood  the  farmer,  smiling 
complacently — for  should  there  not  be  somewhere  a 
farmer  in  this  universal  barnyard? 

But  then,  the  laughter  died ;  for  he  thought  of  Maeter 
linck's  "Life  of  the  Bee",  and  shuddered  at  the  fate  of 
the  male-creature.  He  was  a  mere  accident  in  the 
scheme  of  Nature — she  wasted  all  his  splendors  to  ac 
complish  the  purpose  of  an  hour.  And  now  it  had 
been  accomplished.  He  had  had  his  moment  of  ecstasy, 
his  dizzy  flight  into  the  empyrean ;  and  now  behold  him 
falling,  disembowelled  and  torn,  an  empty  shell! 


216  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

But  no — it  was  not  quite  that  way,  Thyrsis  told 
himself,  after  further  reflection.  In  the  human  hive 
the  male  creature  was  not  only  the  bearer  of  the  seed, 
he  was  also  the  worker.  And  so  there  was  one  more 
function  he  had  to  perform.  All  those  fine  frenzies 
of  his,  his  ideals  and  his  enthusiasms — they  had  served 
their  purpose,  and  would  fade;  but  before  him  there 
was  still  a  future — a  drab  and  dreary  future  of  per 
petual  pot-boiling ! 

He^recalled  their  bridal-night.  All  that  had  puzzled 
him  in  it  and  startled  him — how  clear  it  was  now! 
Cory  don  had  shrunk  from  him,  just  enough  to  lure 
him ;  and  then,  suddenly,  her  whole  being  had  seemed 
to  change — she  had  caught  him,  and  held  him  fast. 
For  he  had  accomplished  her  purpose;  he  had  gotten 
her  with  child !  And  so  he  must  stand  by  her — he  must 
bring  her  food,  that  she  might  give  the  child  life !  And 
for  that  purpose  she  would  hold  him ;  for  that  she 
would  use  every  art  of  which  she  was  mistress — the 
whole  force  of  her  being  would  go  into  it ! 

She  would  not  know  this,  of  course ;  she  would  do 
it  blindly  and  instinctively,  as  she  had  done  everything 
so  far.  She  would  do  it  by  those  same  generous  and 
beautiful  qualities  that  had  made  him  hers !  Therein 
lay  the  humor  of  his  wrhole  adventure — there  lay  the 
deadly  nature  of  this  Snare.  The  cords  of  it  were 
woven  out  of  love  and  tenderness,  out  of  ecstasy  and 
aspiration ;  and  they  were  wound  about  his  very  heart 
strings,  so  that  it  would  kill  him  to  pull  them  loose. 
And  he  would  never  pull  them  loose — he  saw  that  in  a 
sudden  vision  of  ruin !  She  would  be  noble  to  the  utter 
most  limit  of  nobleness.  She  would  threaten  to  destroy 
herself — and  so  he  would  save  her !  She  would  bid 
him  cast  her  away — and  so  he  would  stand  by  her  to 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         217 

the-^end !  And  the  end  would  be  simply  the  withering  and 
shrivelling  of  those  radiant  qualities  which  he  called  his 
genius — qualities  which  were  so  precious  to  him,  but 
about  which  Nature  knew  nothing ! 

So  grim  an  aspect  had  life  come  to  wear  to  this  boy 
of  twenty-one!  He  stripped  all  the  flesh  of  illusion 
from  its  fair  face,  and  saw  the  grinning  skull  be 
neath.  And  he  mocked  at  himself,  because  of  all  those 
virtues  by  which  he  had  been  caught — and  which  yet 
he  knew  were  stronger  than  his  will.  Through  faith 
and  love  he  had  been  made  a  captive ;  and  through  faith 
and  love  would  he  waste  away  and  perish ! 

§  5.  MEANTIME^  Corydon  was  prosecuting  an  in 
quiry  into  these  matters  upon  her  own  account,  and 
getting  at  quite  other  points  of  view.  There  were  some, 
it  seemed,  who  took  this  game  less  seriously  than  she 
and  Thyrsis ;  and  these  managed  to  go  free — they 
broke  the  cords  of  the  Snare,  they  slipped  between  the 
fingers  of  the  hand  of  Fate.  Corydon  had  heard  a 
certain  scientist  refer  to  man  as  "Nature's  insurgent 
son" ;  and  now  came  the  discovery  that  Nature  had 
insurgent  daughters  also. 

Being  in  an  "interesting  condition,"  Corydon  was  en 
titled  to  the  confidences  of  the  married  women  acquaint 
ances  of  the  family.  They  were  eager  to  know  all 
about  her,  and  what  she  was  going  to  do ;  and  they  told 
her  their  own  experiences.  She  brought  these  to  Thyr 
sis,  who  was  thus  admitted  to  a  view  of  the  inner  work 
ings  of  the  "race-suicide"  mill. 

It  was  as  the  doctor  had  said;  each  one  of  these 
middle-class  ladies  considered  herself  a  special  case,  but 
their  stories  all  seemed  to  fit  together.  Nature's  bound 
less  and  irrational  fecundity  was  an  exceedingly  trying 


218  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

feature  of  the  life  of  middle-class  ladies.  In  the  first 
place,  the  having  of  babies  was  a  tedious  and  painful 
matter.  One  became  grotesquely  disfigured,  and  had 
to  hide  away  and  sever  all  social  relationships.  One 
lost  one's  grace  and  attractiveness,  and  hence  the 
power  to  hold  one's  husband.  And  then,  there  were  all 
the  cares  and  the  inconveniences  of  children.  What  wras 
one  to  do  with  them,  in  a  city  where  the  best  hotels  and 
apartment-houses  barred  them  out? 

Then,  too,  even  supposing  the  best  of  intentions — 
there  was  the  cost  of  living.  At  present  prices  it  was 
impossible  for  a  man  who  had  only  a  salary  to  support 
more  than  one  or  two  children ;  and  with  prices  in 
creasing  as  they  were,  one  could  not  be  sure  of  edu 
cating  even  these.  And  meanwhile,  the  Nature  of 
Things  had  apparently  planned  it  that  a  woman  should 
bear  a  child  once  a  year  for  half  her  life-time ! 

So  all  these  middle-class  ladies  used  devices  to  pre 
vent  conception.  But  these  were  not  always  successful 
— husbands  were  frequently  inconsiderate.  And  so  came 
the  abortion-business,  which  the  doctor  had  described  as 
the  curse  of  the  age. 

Now  and  then  one  could  accomplish  the  thing  by  some 
of  the  innumerable  drugs  that  were  advertised  for  the 
purpose.  But  these  always  made  one  ill,  and  seldom  did 
anything  else.  Corydon  met  one  young  person,  the 
wife  of  a  rising  stockbroker,  who  had  presented  her 
husband  with  twins  in  the  first  year  of  their  marriage, 
and  who  declared  that  she  was  apparently  designed  to 
populate  all  the  tenements  in  the  city.  This  airy  and 
vivacious  young  lady  lay  back  in  her  automobile  and 
prattled  to  Corydon,  declaring  that  she  was  "always  in 
trouble."  She  had  tried  to  coax  her  family  physician 
in  vain,  and  had  finally  gone  elsewhere.  She  had  got 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         219 

quite  used  to  the  experience.  All  that  troubled  her 
nowadays  was  how  to  make  excuses  to  her  friends. 
One  could  not  have  "appendicitis"  forever! 

But  there  was  another  side  to  the  matter.  There  was 
one  woman  who  had  had  a  hemorrhage;  and  another 
whose  sister  had  contracted  blood-poisoning,  and  had 
died  in  agony.  There  were  even  some  who  pleaded  and 
exhorted  like  the  doctor,  and  talked  about  the  thing's 
being  murder.  All  of  which  arguments  and  fears  Cory- 
don  brought  to  her  husband,  to  be  pondered  and  dis 
cussed. 

They  spent  whole  days  wandering  about  in  the  park 
in  agony  of  soul.  They  had  one  brief  month  in  which 
to  decide  the  question — the  question  of  life  or  death 
to  the  possible  child.  Truly  here,  once  more,  was  an 
issue  to  which  Thyrsis  might,  apply  the  words  of 
Carlyle— 

"Choose  well,  your  choice  is 
Brief  and  yet  endless  f" 

§6.  THIS  was  also  the  month  in  which  the  fate  of 
the  book  was  decided.  Each  day,  as  he  went  for  the 
mail,  Thyrsis'  heart  would  beat  high  with  expectation ; 
and  each  day  he  would  be  chilled  with  bitter  disappoint 
ment.  He  was  still  hoping  for  a  real  review,  or  for 
some  signs  of  the  book's  "catching  on".  Nor  did  he 
finally  give  up  until  he  chanced  to  have  a  talk  about  it 
with  his  friend,  Mr.  ArdsleyJ  who  explained  to  him 
that  here,  too,  he  had  fallen  into  a  trap. 

His  "publishers"  were,  not  really  publishers  at  all. 
They  did  not  make  their  profit  by  selling  books — they 
made  it  out  of  authors.  There  were  many  vain  and 
foolish  people  who  wrote  books  which  they  were 


220  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

anxious  to  see  in  print,  so  that  they  might  be  known  as 
literary  lights  among  their  friends.  Many  of  them 
had  money,  and  would  buy  a  number  of  copies ;  and  the 
"publishers"  had  the  expenses  guaranteed  in  advance, 
and  so  would  make  a  profit  upon  the  sale  of  even  one 
or  two  hundred  copies.  All  this  being  well  known,  the 
reviews  never  paid  any  attention  to  the  announcements 
of  this  concern,  nor  did  "the  trade"  handle  their  books. 
As  for  Thyrsis'  volume,  they  had  printed  it  very 
cheaply — it  was  to  be  doubted  if  it  had  cost  them  what 
he  had  paid  them.  And  they  had  even  published  it  as 
a  "net  price"  book — thereby  taking  three  cents  more 
off  the  royalty  to  which  he  was  entitled ! 

Mr.  Ardsley  had  declared  that  he  would  be  lucky  if 
his  book  sold  three  hundred  copies ;  and  so  he  felt  that 
it  was  quite  a  tribute  to  the  merits  of  his  work  when, 
after  six  months  more  of  waiting,  he  received  a  royalty 
statement  from  the  concern  showing  a  sale  of  seven 
hundred  and  forty-three  copies,  and  enclosing  a  check 
for  eight-nine  dollars  and  sixteen  cents.  This  check 
Thyrsis  paid  over  to  his  rich  relative,  and  a  week  or 
two  later,  when  he  sold  a  short  story,  he  sent  the  balance 
of  the  hundred  dollars  that  he  owed.  And  so  he  figured 
that  the  privilege  of  writing  his  first  book  and  offer 
ing  it  to  the  hundred  great  men  of  letters  of  the 
country,  had  cost  him  the  sum  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  dollars  and  eighty-four  cents ! 

Meantime,  of  course,  Thyrsis  was  hearing  from  these 
great  men  of  letters.  When  he  counted  up  at  the  end 
he  found  that  he  had  received  replies  from  sixteen  of 
them ;  whether  the  other  eighty-four  received  his  book, 
or  what  they  did  with  it,  he  never  knew.  Of  these  six 
teen,  six  wrote  formal  acknowledgements,  and  two  others 
said  that  they  found  nothing  to  appeal  to  them  in  hi» 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

book;  so  there  were  left  eight  who  gave  him  comfort. 
Several  of  these  were  among  the  really  vital  men  of 
the  time,  as  Thyrsis  found  out  later,  when  he  came  to 
read  their  books,  and  to  know  them  as  something  other 
than  newspaper  names.  Several  of  them  wrote  him  long" 
and  really  helpful  criticisms  of  his  work,  recognizing 
the  merits  he  knew  it  had,  and  pointing  out  defects 
which  he  was  quick  to  acknowledge.  Four  of  them  even 
told  him  that  he  had  undoubted  genius,  and  predicted 
great  things  for  him.  But  that  was  as  far  as  any  of 
them  went.  They  wrote  their  opinions,  and  there  they 
stopped,  as  if  at  a  blank  wall.  No  one  among  them 
seemed  to  feel  that  he  could  take  any  action  upon  his 
opinion,  however  favorable ;  not  one  comprehended  that 
what  the  boy  was  groping  for  was  neither  praise  nor 
blame,  but  a  chance  for  life.  Not  one  had  any  advice 
of  a  practical  sort  to  offer;  not  one  had  any  personal 
or  human  thing  to  say ;  not  one  even  asked  to  see  him ! 
And  lest  this  should  be  due  to  oversight,  or  to  false 
delicacy,  Thyrsis  wrote,  in  his  desperation,  and  re 
minded  them  that  the  "genius"  they  recognized  was 
being  killed  by  starvation.  To  this,  one  did  not  reply, 
and  another  advised  him  to  take  up  newspaper  work,  as 
"a  means  of  getting  in  touch  with  the  public" ! 

It  was  a  ghastly  thing  to  the  boy  as  he  came  to 
realize  it — this  utter  deadness  and  coldness  of  "the 
world".  Thyrsis  himself  was  all  afire  with  love — with 
love,  not  only  for  his  vision  and  his  art,  but  for  all 
humanity,  and  for  humanity's  noblest  dreams.  His 
friends  were  poets  and  sages  of  past  time,  men  of 
generous  faith  and  quick  sympathies;  and  in  all  the 
world  of  the  living,  was  there  not  one  such  man  to  be 
found?  Was  there  nothing  left  upon  earth  but  critical 
discernment  and  epistolary  politeness? 


222  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

The  question  pursued  him  still  more,  after  the  one 
interview  which  resulted  from  all  this  correspondence. 
There  was  a  distinguished  Harvard  professor  who  had 
told  him  that  he  had  rare  powers  and  must  go  on ;  and 
'hearing  that  the  professor  was  in  New  York,  Tljyrsis 
asked  the  privilege  of  calling. 

It  was  in  one  of  the  city's  most  expensive  hotels — 
for  the  professor  had  married  a  rich  wife,  and  was 
what  people  called  "socially  prominent".  The  other 
did  not  know  this ;  but  it  seemed  an  awful  thing  to  him 
that  anyone  should  be  sitting  in  a  brocaded  silk^covered 
chair  in  a  palace  of  luxury  like  this,  while  possessed 
of  the  knowledge  that  his  genius  was  starving. 

"You  tell  me  to  go  on,  professor,"  he  said.    "But  how 


can  I  go  on?" 


The  professor  was  fingering  his  gold  eyeglasses  and 
studying  his  visitor. 

"You  must  get  soma  kind  of  routine  work,"  he  de 
clared — "enough  to  support  you*  You  can't  expect  to 
live  by  your  writing." 

"But  if  I  do  that,  I  can't  write !"  cried  Thy rsis-. 

"You'll  have  to  do  the  best  you  can,"  said  the  other. 

"But  I  can't  do  anything!  The  emotions  of  it  eat 
me  all  up.  I  daren't  even  let  myself  think  about  my 
work  when  I  have  to  do  other  things." 

"I  should  think,"  commented  the  professor,  "that  you 
would  find  you  are  still  more  hindered  by  the  uncertain 
ties  of  hack-work." 

"I  do  find  that,"  the  boy  replied.  "That  is  just  what 
is  the  matter  with  me." 

"I'm  afraid  you'll  be  forced  to  a  compromise  in  the 
end." 

"But  I  won't!  I  won't!"  cried  Thyrsis,  wildly.  "I 
will  starve  first !" 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

The  other  said  nothing. 

"Or  I  will  beg!"  added  Thyrsis. 

The  other's  look  clouded  slightly — as  the  boy,  with 
his  quick  sensitiveness,  noted  instantly.  "Of  course," 
said  the  professor,  "if  you  are  not  ashamed  to  do 
that " 

"But  why  should  I  be  ashamed?  Greater  men  than 
I  have  begged  for  their  art." 

"Yes,  I  know  that.  And  naturally — I  honor  that 
feeling  in  you.  If  you  have  that  much  fervor — why, 
of  course,  you  will  do  it.  But  I'm  a.fraid  you'll  find  it 
a  humiliating  experience." 

"I  wouldn't  expect  to  find  it  a  picnic,"  answered 
Thyrsis,  and-  took  his  departure — having  perceived  that 
the  professor's  leading  thought  was  a  fear  lest  he  should 
begin  his  begging  that  day. 

So  there  it  was !  There  was  the  eminent  critic,  the 
writer  of  exquisite  appreciations  of  literature!  The 
darling  of  the  salons  of  Boston — which  called  itself  the 
Athens  of  America  and  the  hub  of  the  universe !  A  man 
with  a  brain  full  of  all  the  culture  of  the  ages — and 
with  the  heart  of  a  mummy  and  the  soul  of  a  snob ! 
He  had  approved  of  Thyrsis'  consecration  with  his  lips 
— because  he  did  not  dare  to  disapprove  it,  because  the 
ghosts  of  a  thousand  paupers  of  genius  had  stood  over 
him  and  awed  him  into  silence.  But  in  his  secret  heart 
he  had  despised  this  wan  and  haggard  boy  who  threat 
ened  to  beg ;  and  the  boy  went  out  of  the  palace  of 
luxury,  feeling  like  an  outcast  rat. 

§  7.  FROM  this  interview  Thyrsis  went  to  meet  Cory- 
don  in  the  park;  and  after  he  had  told  her  what  had 
happened,  they  began  one  more  discussion  of  their  great 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

problem.  This  had  to  be  the  final  one ;  for  the  month 
of  respite  had  passed,  and  the  time  for  action  was  come! 

Through  their  long  arguments,  Thyrsis  had  gradu 
ally  come  to  realize  that  the  decision  rested  with  him. 
Corydon  was  in  his  hands ;  she  had  become  u  burden 
upon  him,  and  she  would  rather  she  were  dead ;  «ind  so 
he  had  to  take  the  responsibility  and  issue  the  com 
mand.  So  through  many  an  hour  while  Corydon  slept 
he  had  marshalled  the  facts  and  tested  them,  hungering 
with  all  his  soul  for  knowledge  of  the  right. 

To  bring  a  child  into  the  world  would  shatter  every 
plan  they  had  formed.  And  yet,  again  and  again,  he 
forced  himself  to  face  the  idea.  They  had  always 
meant  to  have  children  ultimately ;  and  now  the  gift 
was  offered- — and  suppose  they  rejected  it,  and  it  should 
never  be  offered  again  !  However  unpropitious  the  hour 
might  be,  still  the  hour  was  here* — the  task  was  already 
one-third  done.  And  if  there  were  cares  and  responsi 
bilities,  expenses  and  pains  of  child-birth — at  least  they 
would  be  for  a  child;  whereas,  in  the  other  case,  there 
were  also  cares  and  responsibilities,  expenses  and  pains 
— and  for  naught ! 

Throughout  all  this  long  pilgrimage  of  love,  Thyrsis 
had  been  struck  by  the  part  which  blind  chance  had 
played.  It  was  blind  chance  that  had  brought  Corydon 
to  the  country  where  he  had  gone.  It  was  blind  chance 
that  he  had  read  his  book  to  her.  And  then — the  chance 
that  he  had  gone  to  see  a  doctor  about  diet !  And  that 
dark  accident  in  the  night,  that  had  opened  the  gates 
of  life  to  a  new  human  soul !  And  now,  strangest  of 
all — the  chance  by  which  this  last  issue  was  to  be  de 
cided !  By  a  walk  in  the  park,  and  a  casual  meeting 
with  a  nurse-maid ! 

"God  knows  I  want  to  do  what  is  right !"  Thyrsis 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

had  said.  "But  I  just  don't  know  what  to  say!" — - 
And  then  they  sat  down  upon  a  bench,  and  the  nurse 
maid  came  and  sat  beside  them. 

It  was  five  or  ten  minutes  before  Thyrsis  noted  what 
was  going  on.  He  was  lost  in  his  sombre  brood 
ing,  his  eyes  fixed  upon  vacancy;  when  suddenly  he 
heard  Corydon  exclaim:  "Isn't  he  a  little  love!"  He 
turned  to  look. 

The  nurse-maid  was  in  charge  of  a  carriage,  and  in 
the  carriage  was  a  baby ;  and  the  baby  was  smiling  at 
Corydon,  and  Corydon  was  smiling  back.  She  was 
poking  her  finger  at  it,  and  it  was  catching  at  the  finger 
with  its  chubby  paws.  "Isn't  he  a  little  love!"  Cory 
don  repeated. 

Thyrsis  stared  at  her.  But  then,  quickly,  he  hid  his 
thought.  He  even  pretended  to  be  interested. 

"Isn't  he  pretty?"  she  asked  him. 

Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  seemed  to  Thyrsis  to  be 
quite  conspicuously  ugly.  He  had  red  hair,  and  a  flat 
nose,  and  was  altogether  lacking  in  aristocratic  at' 
tributes.  But  Thyrsis  answered  promptly,  "Yes,  dear,"1 
and  continued  to  watch. 

And  Corydon  continued  to  play.  Apparently  she 
knew  something  about  babies — how  to  amuse  them  and 
how  to  handle  them,  and  had  even  heard  rumors  about 
how  to  feed  them.  She  was  asking  questions  of  the 
nurse-maid,  and  displaying  interest — Thyrsis  would 
have  been  no  more  amazed  had  he  found  her  in  converse 
with  a  Chaldean  astrologer.  For  a  full  quarter  of  an 
hour  she  had  managed  to  forget  her  agonies  of  spirit, 
and  to  play  with  a  baby ! 

They  got  up  to  go.  "You  like  babies,  don't  you* 
dearest?"  asked  Thyrsis,  as  they  walked. 

"Why,  yes,"  she  said. 


226  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  then  there  was  a  silence,  while  he  pondered. 
Here,  he  perceived  in  a  flash,  was  the  great  hand  of 
Nature  again ! 

Since  the  first  day  of  their  marriage  Thyrsis  had  been 
haunted  by  the  sense  of  a  dark  shadow  hanging  over 
them,  of  a  seed  of  tragedy  in  their  love.  He  had  his 
great  task  to  do,  and  Corydon  could  not  do  it  with 
him.  The  long  road  of  his  art-pilgrimage  stretched 
out  before  him;  and  some  day  he  must  take  his  staff 
.and  go. 

And  now  here,  of  a  sudden,  was  the  solution  of  the 
problem !  The  answer  to  the  riddle  of  all  their  dis 
harmonies  !  Let  Corydon  have  her  baby — and  then  he 
might  have  his  books !  As  he  pondered,  there  came  to 
him  the  words  of  the  old  doctor — "She  wants  that 
baby !" 

So  before  he  reached  home,  his  mind  was  made  up. 
Cost  what  it  might,  she  should  have  the  baby.  But 
he  would  not  tell  her  his  reason — that  must  be  a  secret 
between  himself  and  Mother  Nature.  And  then  it 
seemed  to  him  that  he  could  hear  Mother  Nature  laugh 
ing  behind  her  curtain — and  laughing  not  only  at  Cory 
don,  but  at  him.  He  recalled  with  a  twinge  all  his 
earlier  cynicism,  his  biological  bitterness ;  he  had  taken 
up  the  burden  of  his  virtues  again ! 

§  8.  IN  many  ways  this  decision,  once  arrived  at, 
was  a  relief  to  them.  It  lifted  the  weight  of  a  great 
fear  from  their  lives ;  it  gave  them  six  months  more  of 
respite — and  in  six  months,  what  might  not  Thyrsis  be 
able  to  do?  He  had  been  toiling  incessantly  at  his 
hack-work,  and  had  saved  nearly  ninety  dollars,  which 
would  be  enough  to  keep  them  going  until  his  new  book 
was  written. 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         227 

This  book  was  now  fairly  seething  in  him.  A  wonder 
ful  thing  it  was  to  be,  far  beyond  his  first ;  in  the  beauty 
of  it  and  the  glow  of  it  he  was  forgetting  all  his  disap 
pointments,  all  the  mockeries  of  fate  and  the  hardness  of 
the  world.  If  only  he  could  get  this  book  done,  then 
surely  he  would  be  saved,  then  surely  men  would  be 
forced  to  give  him  a  chance! 

So  he  waited  not  a  moment  after  the  decision  was 
made;  he  even  blamed  himself  for  having  waited  so 
long.  From  the  "higher  regions"  there  had  come  a 
windfall  in  the  shape  of  two  railroad-passes ;  and  a 
couple  of  days  later  they  stepped  out  upon  the  depot- 
platform  of  a  little  town  upon  the  shore  of  Lake 
Ontario. 

Oh,  the  joy  of  being  in  the  country  again  !  The  smell 
of  the  newly-plowed  earth,  the  sight  of  the  spring-time 
verdure ;  and  then  the  first  glimpse  of  the  lake,  with  its 
marvellous  clear-green  water,  and  the  fresh  cold  breeze 
that  blew  from  off  it!  There  was  challenge  and  ad 
venture  in  that  air — Thyrsis  thought  of  argonauts 
and  old  sea-rovers,  and  his  soul  was  stirred  to  higji  re 
solves.  He  took  deep  breaths  of  delight,  and  clenched 
his  hands,  and  imagined  that  he  was  at  his  book 
already. 

They  found  a  second-hand  tent  which  could  be  bought 
for  eight  dollars ;  four  dollars  more  would  pay  for  the 
lumber,  and  so  they  would  live  rent-free  for  the  next 
five  months !  They  went  far  down  the  shore  of  the  lake, 
looking  for  a  place  to  camp,  and  picked  out  a  rocky 
headland,  a  mile  from  the  nearest  farmhouse,  and  com 
pletely  out  of  sight  of  all  the  world.  The  rich  woman 
who  owned  it  was  in  Europe,  but  the  agent  gave  per 
mission  ;  and  then  Thyrsis  looked  at  his  watch  and 


228  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

made  a  wild  suggestion — "Let's  get  settled  this  after 
noon  !" 

"Why,  it's  nearly  three  o'clock!"  cried  Corydon. 
"It'll  be  dark !" 

"There'll  be  a  moon,"  he  replied,  "and  we  can  work 
Sill  night  if  want  to." 

"But  suppose  it  should  rain !" 

"I  don't  see  any  signs  of  it.  And  what's  the  use  of 
spending  a  night  in  the  town,  and  wasting  all  that 
money  ?" 

And  so  it  was  decided.  They  went  to  the  store  and 
purchased  their  housekeeping  equipment.  What  a  sense 
of  power  and  prosperity  it  gave  them  as  they  made  their 
selection — two  canvas-cots  and  two  pairs  of  blankets, 
a  lamp  and  an  oil-can  and  a  tiny  oil-stove,  two  water- 
buckets  and  an  axe  and  a  wash-basin,  a  camp-stool 
and  a  hammock  and  a  box  full  of  groceries !  They  got 
a  team  to  carry  all  this,  in  addition  to  their  lumber 
and  their  trunks.  They  stopped  at  a  farm-house,  and 
arranged  to  get  their  milk  and  eggs  and  bread  and 
vegetables,  and  also  to  borrow  a  hammer  and  saw ;  and 
then  till  after  sundown  Thyrsis  toiled  at  the  building 
of  the  platform  and  the  cutting  of  stakes  and  poles  for 
the  tent. 

Corydon  fried  some  bacon  and  heated  a  can  of  corn, 
and  they  had  a  marvellous  and  incredible  supper.  After 
wards  they  raised  the  tent,  and  she  held  the  poles  erect 
while  Thyrsis  tied  the  guy-ropes.  They  had  been  ad 
vised  to  choose  a  sheltered  place,  back  in  the  woods ;  but 
they  were  all  for  adventure  and  a  view  of  the  water,  and 
so  they  were  out  on  the  open  point.  There  were  pine- 
trees,  however,  and  Thyrsis  had  strong  ropes  with  which 
to  anchor  the  tent  fast.  When  he  finished,  about  ten 
o'clock  at  night,  he  stood  off  and  admired  the  job  by 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         229 

the  light  of  the  moon,  and  declared  that  a  s^orm  might 
tear  the  tent  to  pieces,  but  could  never  blow  it  over. 

They  hauled  in  their  trunks  and  the  rest  of  their  be 
longings,  and  set  up  the  cots  and  spread  the  blankets. 
Then  by  the  light  of  the  oil-lamp  they  gazed  about. 

"Oh,  Thyrsis,"  she  cried,  "isn't  it  glorious !" 

"It's  our  home,"  he  said.  "A  home  we  made  all  for 
ourselves !" 

"And  a  home  without  a  landlady!"  she  added. 

"And  with  no  saloon  underneath!"  said  he.  "And 
no  street-cars  and  no  screaming  children  in  front  of 
it!" 

Instead  there  was  the  night  with  its  thousand  eyes* 
and  the  lake,  with  the  moon-fire  flung  wide  across  it, 
and  the  pine-trees  singing  in  the  wind. 

"Brr !  it's  cold !"  exclaimed  Corydon. 

"We'll  have  to  sleep  with  our  clothes  on  for  a  while," 
said  he.  And  yet  they  laughed  aloud  in  glee.  "It's  all 
we  want !" 

"It's  all  we  ever  could  want!"  declared  Corydon. 
"Oh,  let's  work  hard  and  earn  money  enough,  so  that 
we  can  stay  here  beneath  the  open  sky,  and  not  have 
to  go  back  into  slavery !" 

Then,  in  the  morning,  the  joy  of  a  plunge  in  the  icy 
lake,  and  of  a  run  in  the  woods,  and  of  breakfast  eaten 
in  the  warm  sunlight!  There  was  much  work  still  to 
be  done ;  Thyrsis  had  to  build  a  stand  of  shelves  and  a 
table  for  the  tent,  and  a  table  and  a  bench  outside ;  and 
then  all  their  belongings  had  to  be  unpacked  and  set  in 
order.  Such  fun  as  they  had  laying  out  the  imaginary 
partitions  in  their  house;  two  bedrooms  and  a  library, 
a  kitchen  and  a  pantry — and  all  outdoors  for  a  living- 
room! 

They  would  count  this  the  beginning  of  their  love; 


230  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

at  last  they  were  free  to  love,  and  to  be  happy  as  they 
chose.  There  was  no  longer  anyone  to  criticize  them, 
scarcely  anyone  to  know  about  them ;  their  only  contact 
with  the  world  was  when  they  went  for  the  mail  and  for 
provisions.  They  learned  that  the  washer-woman  who 
came  for  their  clothes  was  ashamed  for  the  poverty  in 
which  they  lived,  and  that  some  of  the  neighbors 
suspected  them  of  being  oil-smugglers ;  on  two  occa 
sions  came  sheriffs  from  distant  counties  to  compare 
Thyrsis  with  the  photographs  and  descriptions  of  long- 
sought  bank-burglars  and  murderers.  But  although 
Thyrsis  had  often  declared  that  he  would  rob  a  bank  to 
secure  his  freedom  to  work,  he  had  not  yet  done  it,  and 
so  these  experiences  only  added  piquancy  to  their  ad 
venture. 

It  was  a  life  such  as  might  have  been  lived  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden.  They  cooked  and  ate  and  studied  out 
doors,  in  a  sunny  glade  when  it  was  cool,  and  in  the 
shade  of  a  great  oak-tree  when  it  was  warm.  They 
wandered  about  in  the  forest,  they  bathed  naked  in  the 
crystal  lake — diving  from  the  rocky  headland,  and 
afterwards  standing  upon  it  and  drying  themselves  in 
the  sun.  Corydon  was  now  free  to  fling  away  the  conven 
tionalities  which  had  hampered  her  in  the  city ;  by  way 
of  signalizing  her  enfranchisement  she  cut  short  her 
hair — that  untamed,  rebellious  hair  which  had  taken 
so  long  to  dry  and  to  braid  and  to  keep  in  order ! 

So  they  lived,  in  daily  touch  with  the  great  heart 
of  Nature.  They  saw  the  sun  rise  on  one  side  of  the 
rocky  headland,  and  set  upon  the  other ;  they  watched 
the  great  storms  sweep  across  the  lake,  and  the  light 
nings  stab  into  the  water.  Sometimes,  at  night,  the 
gale  would  shake  their  tent  until  they  could  not  be  sure 
if  it  was  wind  or  thunder ;  but  the  stays  held  fast,  and 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         231 

they  slept  untroubled.  And  then  the  storm  would  pass* 
and  in  the  morning  there  would  be  the  lake,  sparkling 
in  the  sunlight;  and  the  sky,  clear  as  crystal,  with  the 
white  gulls  wheeling  about,  and  grey-blue  herons  stand 
ing  near  the  shore. 

There  were  bass  to  be  caught  from  the  rocky  point. 
"So  we  must  have  at  least  one  meal  of  fish  every  day,'* 
declared  Thyrsis. 

"I'm  willing,"  said  Corydon— "if  you'll  catch  them." 

"And  then,  there  are  lots  of  squirrels  about." 

"Squirrels !"  cried  she. 

"Yes.  I  can  knock  one  over  with  a  stone  now  and 
then — you'll  see." 

"But,  Thyrsis !     To  eat  them !" 

"Did  you  ever  taste  one?"  he  laughed. 

"But  it's  cruel !"  she  exclaimed ;  and  he  thought  to 
himself,  How  like  the  little  Corydon  of  old! 

"Wait  till  I've  skinned  him  and  fried  him  in  bacon 
grease,"  he  answered. 

And  even  so  it  proved.  Corydon  was  troubled  by 
the  crisp  little  toes  turned  up  in  the  air,  but  when  these 
had  been  cut  off,  she  yielded  to  the  allurements  of  odor 
and  taste.  "I'm  nothing  but  a  digesting  machine  now 
adays  !"  she  lamented. 

To  which  Thyrsis  replied  in  the  words  of  the  village- 
girl  in  "Faust,"  "  'She  feeds  two  when  she  eats!'  " 

They  had  been  obliged  to  give  up  their  attempt  to> 
live  on  prunes  and  turnips.  For  the  doctor  had  warned 
them  that  Corydon  must  have  plenty  of  "good  nourish 
ing  food" ;  and  this  warning  was  backed  up  by  all  her 
women  acquaintances — and  also  by  Corydon's  own  in 
ner  voices.  The  appetite  that  she  developed  was  ap 
palling  to  them — not  only  as  to  quantity  but  as  to 
quality.  She  would  find  herself  unable  to  eat  anything; 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

they  had  in  their  pantry,  and  with  a  craving  for  the 
wildest  and  most  impossible  things ;  or  she  would  not 
Imow  what  she  wanted — and  would  travel  to  the  store 
and  gaze  about  at  the  provisions,  until  a  sudden 
illumination  came.  Sometimes  she  would  be  so  hungry 
for  it  that  she  could  not  wait  to  get  home,  but  would 
sit  down  by  the  road-side  and  devour  the  contents  of 
the  market-basket.  To  these  cravings  she  yielded  re 
ligiously,  because  she  had  been  told  that  they  repre 
sented  vital  needs  of  her  system.  Some  one  had  told 
her  an  appalling  tale  about  a  pregnant  woman  who 
had  been  possessed  by  a  desire  for  bananas;  and  be 
cause  she  had  not  gratified  it,  the  baby  when  born  had 
cried  for  five  weeks — until  they  had  fed  it  a  banana ! 

These  strange  experiences  lent  new  interest  to  their 
intimacy.  They  went  through  all  the  journey  of  ma 
ternity  together.  Pretty  soon  the  changes  in  her  body 
began  to  be  noticeable ;  and  day  by  day  they  would 
watch  these.  How  wonderful  it  all  was,  how  incredible ! 
Thyrsis  would  sink  upon  his  knees  before  her,  and 
clasp  his  arms  about  her  and  laugh  "She's  going  to  have 
a  little  baby !"  And  Corydon  would  blush  and  protest ; 
she  did  not  like  to  be  teased  about  it — she  was  still  only 
half  reconciled  to  it.  "I'm  only  a  child  myself!"  she 
would  cry.  "I've  no  education — nothing!  And  I'm 
not  fit  for  it!"  Then  he  would  have  to  comfort  her, 
telling  her  that  life  was  long,  and  that  the  child  would 
be  something  to  study. 

They  discussed  the  weighty  question  of  the  name 
which  they  should  give  the  child.  In  this,  as  in  other 
matters,  they  were  without  precedents  and  limitations, 
and  they  found  that  excess  of  freedom  is  sometimes 
an  embarrassment.  They  were  impelled  towards  lit 
erary  reminiscence ;  and  Thyrsis  soon  realized  that  this 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         233 

was  a  matter  in  which  the  sensuous  temperament  would 
have  to  have  its  way.  "After  all,"  argued  Corydon,  "to 
you  a  name  is  a  name.  If  you  can  call  the  baby  and 
have  it  answer,  isn't  that  all  you  care  about?" 

"Yes,"  he  assented,  "I  suppose  so ;  if  the  name's  too 
unhandy  for  calling,  I  can  have  a  nickname." 

To  Corydon,  on  the  other  hand,  a  name  was  a  vital 
thing ;  a  child  that  was  lovely  under  one  name  might 
be  unendurable  under  another.  She  had  been  reading 
Ossian,  and  the  poems  of  the  neo-Celtic  enthusiasts ; 
so  after  much  pondering  and  consultation  she  an 
nounced  that  Cedric  and  Eileen  were  the  two  names 
from  which  they  would  choose. 

§  9.  MANY  moods  of  tenderness  came  to  them.  He 
loved  to  fondle  her,  to  exchange  endearments  with 
her.  They  gave  each  other  foolish  names,  after  the 
fashion  of  lovers  the  world  over ;  and  they  would  go  on 
to  modify  these  names,  and  add  prefixes  and  suffixes, 
until  the  most  ingenious  philologist  could  not  have  fig 
ured  out  where  the  names  had  started.  They  made  new 
words,  also ;  they  invented  a  whole  language  for  use  in 
these  times  of  illumination,  and  which  Thyrsis  denoted 
by  the  name  of  "dam-fool  talk". 

One  was  always  discovering  new  qualities  in  Corydon. 
She  had  as  many  moods  as  the  lake  by  which  they  lived, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  that  with  each  mood  her  whole 
personality  changed — she  would  even  look  like  another 
being.  There  was  the  every-day  Corydon,  demure,  and 
rather  silent ;  and  then  there  was  the  Corydon  who  lived 
in  the  arms  of  Nature — who  swam  in  the  water,  a  sister 
of  the  mermaids,  and  made  herself  drunken  with  the 
sunlight ;  and  then  would  come  a  mood  of  mischief,  and 
laughter  would  break  from  her,  and  her  wit  would  be 


234  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

such  that  Thyrsis  would  sigh  for  a  stenographer.  She 
would  make  herself  a  Grecian  costume  out  of  a  sheet, 
and  dance  to  music  of  her  own  making;  or  she  would 
put  trinkets  upon  her  forehead,  and  be  a  gypsy-queen 
— she  could  be  anything  that  was  wild  and  exotic  and 
unpremeditated.  She  had  dances  for  that  mood  also — 
she  would  laugh  and  caper  as  merrily  as  any  young 
witch.  But  then,  again,  there  would  come  the  Corydon 
of  melancholy  and  despair ;  her  features  would  shrink 
up,  her  face  would  become  peaked  and  pitiful,  she  would 
seem  like  a  child  of  ten.  Sometimes  Thyrsis  could 
laugh  her  out  of  such  a  mood  by  telling  her  of  her 
"beady  black  eyes" ;  and  she  did  not  like  to  desecrate 
her  eyes. 

And  now  there  was  a  new  Corydon — the  Corydon 
who  had  been  chosen  of  the  Lord,  the  worker  of  a 
miracle.  This  gave  new  awe  to  her  presence,  it  set 
a  crown  upon  her  forehead.  One  morning,  in  mid 
summer,  they  had  come  out  from  their  bath,  and  she 
stood  upon  the  rock  in  the  sunshine ;  and  suddenly  he 
saw  her  give  a  start,  and  stand  transfixed,  staring  in 
front  of  her. 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked. 

Her  voice  thrilled  as  she  whispered,  "Thyrsis !  It 
moved !" 

"Moved?"  he  echoed. 

"I  felt  the  child  move !"  she  cried. 

And  so  he  came  and  put  his  hands  upon  her  body, 
and  together  they  stood  waiting,  breathless,  as  if  listen 
ing  for  a  far-off  sound. 

"There  !     There  !"  she  cried.     "Did  you  feel  it?" 

Yes,  he  had  felt  it.  And  in  all  his  life  had  he  ever 
felt  anything  stranger?  The  first  sign  of  the  new  life 
that  was  to  be — the  first  hail  out  of  the  darkness  of 


THE  CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         235 

nonentity !  And  truly,  to  hear  that  hail  was  to  be  rapt 
into  regions  of  wonder  unspeakable! 

It  was  to  be  a  new  human  soul ;  a  creature  like  them 
selves,  with  a  mind  of  its  own,  and  a  sense  of  responsi 
bility.  It  would  be  a  man  or  a  woman,  independent, 
self -creating,  and  knowing  naught  about  this  strange 
inception.  And  yet,  it  would  be  their  life  also  ;  they  had 
caused  it — but  for  them  it  would  never  have  been ! 
Blindly,  unwittingly,  following  the  guidance  of  some 
power  greater  than  themselves,  they  had  called  it  into 
being.  And  in  some  mysterious  and  incredible  way  it 
would  share  their  qualities ;  it  would  be  a  blending  of 
their  natures,  a  symbol  of  their  union,  of  the  strange 
fire  that  had  blazed  up  in  them  and  fused  them  together. 
Truly,  had  they  not  come  here  to  the  essence  of  love, 
that  great  blind  force  which  had  ruled  and  guided  all 
things  from  Time's  beginning? 

They  had  come  to  the  very  making  of  life,  it  seemed. 
And  yet,  they  wondered — were  they  rea'Ay  there?  This 
new  soul  that  was  to  be — had  they  in  truth  created  it? 
Or  had  it  existed  before  this?  And  whence  did  it  come? 
If  it  was  really  the  dignified  and  divine  thing  that  it 
would  someday  imagine  itself  to  be,  was  it  not  uncanny 
that  it  should  have  come  thus — a  nameless,  half-human, 
half-animal  thing,  kicking  inside  the  body  of  a  woman? 

It  was  Being,  in  all  its  ineffable  mystery,  its  mon 
strous  and  unendurable  strangeness.  They  lived  face  to 
face  with  it,  they  saw  a  thousand  aspects  of  it.  Some 
times  Corydon  would  be  obsessed  with  the  sense  of  the 
sheer  weight  she  carried ;  a  burden  fastened  upon  her 
and  not  to  be  got  rid  of — an  imposition  and  torment  to 
her.  Then  again,  she  would  see  herself  in  grotesque 
and  even  comical  lights — as  akin  to  all  the  animals,  a 
cousin  of  the  patient  cow.  And  then  would  come  a 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

moment  of  sudden  wonder,  when  she  would  be  trans 
figured,  a  being  divine,  conferring  the  boon  of  life  upon 
another. 

It  was  in  this  last  way  that  Thyrsis  thought  of  her. 
There  was  about  her  a  sense  of  brooding  mystery,  as 
of  one  who  walks  in  the  midst  of  supernatural  presences. 
She  would  sit  for  hours  gazing  before  her,  like  Joan 
of  Arc  listening  to  her  voices ;  arid  he  would  be  touched 
with  awe,  and  would  kiss  her  tenderly  and  with  rever 
ence. 

This  brought  new  meanings  into  their  love,  new  mean 
ings  into  his  life;  he  would  clench  his  hands  and  vow 
afresh  his  battle  with  the  world.  How  hideous  a  thing 
it  was  that  at  this  time  she  should  be  tormented  by  fears 
of  want  and  failure !  That  she  should  have  to  go  with 
out  comforts,  that  she  should  even  fear  to  ask  for  ne 
cessities — because  she  knew  how  fast  his  little  store  of 
money  was  going !  Other  women  had  children,  and  they 
did  not  have  to  be  haunted  by  the  doubt  if  it  was  right 
to  have  them,  if  there  would  be  any  place  for  them  in 
the  world.  And  some  of  these  were  selfish  and  idle 
women,  too — and  yet  they  had  everything  they  needed ! 
And  here  was  Cory  don,  beautiful  and  noble,  the  very 
soul  of  devotion — Corydon  must  be  harrowed  and  tor 
tured!  He  did  not  really  mind  the  world's  treatment 
of  himself,  but  for  this  treatment  of  her — ah,  some 
day  the  world  should  pay  for  that !  Someday  it  should 
do  penance  for  its  mockery  and  its  blindness,  that  had 
been  a  blasphemy  against  the  holy  spirit  itself! 

At  such  times  as  this  he  would  put  his  arms  about 
her,  and  try  to  whisper  something  of  the  pity  and  grief 
that  filled  his  heart.  He  would  try  to  tell  her  how  much 
he  really  loved  her,  how  utterly  he  was  devoted  to  her. 
Some  day  she  should  have  her  rights,  some  day  he  would 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         237 

repay  her  for  all  that  she  had  dared  for  him.  And 
then  the  tears  would  come  into  Corydon's  eyes,  and  she 
would  answer  that  she  feared  nothing  and  cared  about 
nothing,  so  long  as  she  had  his  love. 

§  10.  AFTER  these  things,  Thyrsis  would  go  at  his 
book  again.  He  would  go  at  it  doggedly,  desperately. 
He  had  scarcely  taken  time  to  get  settled  in  the  tent 
and  to  get  their  housekeeping  regime  under  way,  before 
he  had  heard  the  call  of  the  book  and  wandered  away 
to  wrestle  with  it.  The  writing  of  it  was  a  matter  of 
life  and  death  with  him  now — of  life  and  death,  not 
only  for  himself,  and  for  Corydon,  but  for  the  unborn 
soul  as  well.  His  money  would  last  him  only  six  or 
eight  weeks,  and  then  he  would  have  to  take  to  pot-boil 
ing  again.  So  every  hour  was  precious ;  this  time  there 
could  be  no  blundering  permitted. 

Thyrsis  was  not  writing  now  about  minstrels  and 
princesses ;  he  was  not  painting  enraptured  pictures 
of  joy  and  love.  The  pain  of  life  had  become  too  real 
to  him.  His  six  months  of  contact  with  the  world  had 
filled  him  with  bitterness ;  and  he  was  forging  a  sharp 
spear,  that  he  could  drive  into  the  heart  of  folly  and 
stupidity. 

It  was  the  story  of  Hathawi,  the  dreamer,  which  he 
had  come  upon  in  a  Hindoo  legend.  "The  Hearer  of 
Truth,"  was  to  be  the  title  of  the  book;  and  for  it 
Thyrsis  was  working  out  a  new  style.  In  the  original 
it  had  been  a  fanciful  tale;  but  he  meant  to  take  it 
over  to  the  world  of  everyday  reality,  to  give  it  the 
atmosphere  of  utter  verihood.  He  meant  to  use  a  style 
of  biblical  simplicity,  bare  of  all  ornament,  dealing  with 
the  most  elemental  things.  And  this  might  seem  easy, 
but  in  reality  it  was  the  hardest  thing  in  the  world — 


238  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

it  was  like  blank  verse.  One  might  toil  all  day  for  a 
single  phrase  into  which  to  pack  one's  meaning. 

He  wished  to  show  Hathawi  from  the  beginning ;  the 
solitary  child,  the  seer  of  life's  mystery,  who  went  away 
into  a  lonely  place  to  brood.  He  dwelt  in  the  high 
mountains,  where  the  lightning  played  and  the  storm- 
winds  shook  him;  he  disciplined  his  will  by  fasting  and 
prayer,  so  that  the  self  in  him  died,  and  he  could  per 
ceive  eternal  things,  and  aspects  of  being  that  are 
hidden.  He  went  into  the  forests  and  dwelt  with  the 
wild  things,  and  learned  to  understand  their  language — 
not  only  their  beauty  and  their  power,  which  are  plain ; 
not  only  their  fears  and  their  hatreds,  which  are  pain 
ful  to  discover ;  but  also  their  love,  which  is  deepest  of 
all.  He  learned  to  know  the  life  which  is  in  lifeless 
things — in  water  and  air  and  fire;  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  the  flowers,  and  the  venerable  wisdom  of  great  trees, 
and  the  worship  which  is  in  the  floods  of  sunlight.  And 
having  learned  these  things,  Hathawi  came  back  into 
the  world. 

He  found  that  he  was  able  to  read  the  souls  of  men  $ 
but  at  first  he  could  not  believe  what  he  read — it  was 
so  terrible,  and  so  far  from  nature.  He  preferred  to 
stay  among  the  poor,  because  they  were  closer  to  the 
heart  of  things,  and  their  falsehoods  were  simple.  But 
he  discovered  that  the  evil  and  misery  of  men's  life 
came  from  above,  and  so  he  went  into  the  "great 
world"  to  dwell. 

And  everywhere  he  went,  men's  innermost  thoughts 
were  revealed  to  him,  and  to  themselves  through  him. 
He  acted  upon  men  and  women  like  wine — an  impulse 
seized  them  to  speak  the  truth,  the  truth  that  they  had 
hidden  even  from  their  own  hearts.  Afterwards,  when 
they  realized  what  they  had  done,  they  hated  Hathawi 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         239 

and  feared  him;  but  they  said  nothing,  because  each 
thought  that  the  secret  was  his  own. 

But  then,  as  his  power  grew,  Hathawi  began  to  reveal 
men  in  more  public  ways,  and  a  scandal  arose.  There 
was  whispered  a  story  of  a  great  statesman  who  had 
declared  at  a  banquet  what  was  his  real  work  in  the 
world ;  and  one  day  a  bishop  arose  in  his  cathedral  and 
said  that  he  taught  the  dogmas  of  his  church,  because 
they  were  necessary  to  keep  the  people  in  subjection. 
Then  came  the  famous  episode  of  a  policeman  who  bade 
the  prisoner  go  free  and  arrested  the  judge  instead. 
Other  policemen  were  called  upon  to  hinder  their  com 
rade,  but  they  declared  that  he  was  right ;  and  then  news 
paper  reporters,  when  ordered  to  write  about  it,  avowed 
that  they  would  write  only  what  they  believed.  After 
which  came  a  convention  of  .one  of  the  great  political 
parties ;  and  the  presidential  candidate  made  a  speech, 
outlining  his  actual  beliefs,  and  so  destroyed  his  party. 
This,  of  course,  was  a  national  calamity,  for  all  states 
men  declared  that  the  people  could  not  be  deceived  by 
one  party ;  and  then,  too,  it  was  reported  that  Hathawi 
meant  to  attend  the  convention  of  the  other  party ! 

Because  of  this  they  shut  him  up  in  jail,  charging 
him  with  being  a  vagrant,  which  he  undoubtedly  was. 
But  he  won  over  all  the  jailers  and  the  prisoners  to  his 
doctrine,  and  so  the  jail  was  emptied.  Moreover,  it 
was  found  that  some  of  those  who  loved  him  most  truly 
had  come  to  share  his  power  of  hearing  truth.  The 
madness  was  spreading  everywhere ;  agitators  were  busy 
among  the  people,  and  public  safety  was  threatened. 
So  a  certain  very  rich  man,  who  in  Hathawi's  presence 
had  vowed  himself  a  wolf,  engaged  an  assassin  to  strike 
him  down  in  broad  daylight  upon  the  street. 

Then   in   order   to    suppress   the   disturbance,   they 


240  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

spirited  the  body  away  and  burned  it,  and  scattered  the 
ashes.  But  this  was  a  bad  thing  for  them  to  do,  for 
the  ashes  became  seeds  of  the  new  contagion,  and  all 
through  the  great  city,  in  the  strangest  and  most  un 
accountable  way,  men  would  suddenly  begin  to  speak 
the  truth.  And,  of  course  this  made  business  impossible 
— the  merchants  and  traders  had  to  move  away ;  and 
how  was  it  possible  to  preserve  authority,  when  sooner 
or  later  all  the  lawyers  and  the  judges  and  the  poli 
ticians  would  speak  truth?  So  the  people  arose  and 
declared  that  they  were  weary  of  lies,  and  they  erected 
a  statue  of  Hathawi  at  one  of  the  places  where  his  ashes 
had  fallen,  and  declared  that  every  candidate  for  office 
must  make  his  speeches  there.  After  that  it  was  a  long 
time  before  there  were  any  officials  elected — because  no 
man  could  be  found  to  whom  prominence  and  power  were 
not  more  precious  than  public  welfare.  But  meanwhile 
the  people  thrived  exceedingly. 

Finally,  however — the  climax  of  the  story — the  news 
of  all  this  had  spread  to  other  nations,  and  the  rulers 
of  these  nations  perceived  that  it  was  anarchy,  and 
could  by  no  means  be  permitted — their  own  people  were 
threatening  to  rise.  It  must  be  clearly  shown  that  a 
state  without  a  government  would  be  plundered  by 
enemies ;  and  so  they  prepared  to  plunder  it.  And  so 
arose  a  great  agitation  in  Hathawi's  home-state,  and 
men  called  for  a  dictator,  and  for  preparations  of  de 
fence.  But  the  followers  of  Hathawi  cried  out,  saying, 
"Let  us  submit !  Let  us  open  our  city  to  these  men,  and 
let  them  do  their  will — for  the  power  of  the  truth  is 
greater  than  even  they."  And  so  it  was  decided. 

When  the  hostile  rulers  heard  of  this  a  great  fear 
took  possession  of  them.  They  remembered  the  fate  of 
certain  famous  diplomatists  they  had  already  sent  over ; 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

and  they  dared  not  trust  themselves  near  the  statue  of 
the  Hearer  of  Truth.  So  their  plans  of  invasion  came 
to  naught ;  and  among  their  own  people  there  was 
laughter  and  bitter  mockery ;  and  behold,  one  morning, 
a  statue  of  Hathawi  which  some  one  had  set  up  in  a 
public-square !  Here  the  lovers  of  truth  gathered  by 
thousands,  and  the  soldiers  who  were  sent  to  shoot  them 
laid  down  their  arms  and  joined  them;  and  so,  all  over 
the  world,  was  the  end  of  the  dominion  of  the  lie. 

§  11.  SUCH  was  the  outline  of  Thy r sis'  story.  He 
judged  that  it  might  be  a  very  great  story,  or  a  com 
paratively  commonplace  one — it  all  depended  upon  the 
power  with  which  it  was  visioned.  He  must  get  into 
himself  and  wrestle  the  thing  out.  This  was  to  be  his 
act  of  creation — his  baby !  , 

It  was  the  first  time  since  his  marriage  that  Thyrsis 
had  tried  really  to  do  what  he  called  work.  All  things 
else  had  been  mere  echoes  of  the  work  he  had  done  the 
previous  summer ;  but  now  he  had  to  do  something  new, 
something  that  was  an  echo  of  nothing  else.  Every  day 
that  he  faced  the  task,  his  agony  and  despair  of  soul 
grew  greater;  for  he  found  that  he  could  not  do  the 
work.  He  could  not  even  begin  to  do  it — he  could  not 
even  try  to  do  it !  He  was  helpless,  bound  hand  and 
foot! 

It  was  not  his  fault,  it  was  not  Corydon's  fault;  it 
was  a  tragedy  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  things — 
in  the  two  natures  that  were  in  himself.  There  was 
the  man,  who  loved  a  woman,  and  hungered  to  see  her 
happy ;  and  there  was  the  artist,  to  whom  solitude  was 
the  very  breath  of  life.  To  write  this  book — to  write 
it  really — he  would  have  to  spend  weeks  of  brooding 
over  it,  thinking  about  nothing  else  day  and  night ; 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

he  would  have  to  shape  his  whole  existence  to  that  end, 
to  be  free  from  every  distracting  circumstance,  from 
everything  that  called  him  out  of  himself.  And  how 
could  he  hope  for  such  a  thing,  while  he  was  living  in 
a  tent  with  another  person? 

Thyrsis  had  his  artist's  standard  of  rjerfection.  Of 
course,  he  could  never  actually  be  satisfied  with  what 
he  did;  but  at  least  he  could  feel  that  it  was  the  best 
he  was  equal  to — he  could  get  a  real  and  honest  sense 
of  exhaustion  for  himself.  But  now,  the  moment  that 
he  faced  the  problem  fairly,  he  sgw  he  could  never  get 
that  real  and  honest  sense  of  exhaustion  again.  He 
was  dragged  up  to  the  issue  and  forced  to  face  it  in 
stantly.  The  pressure  of  circumstances  upon  him  was 
overwhelming;  and  he  had  to  make  up  his  mind  to  do 
something  he  had  never,  done  before — instead  of  really 
writing  his  books,  to  do  the  best  he  could  with  them ! 

Yet,  inevitable  as  this  was,  and  clearly  as  he  saw 
it,  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  it.  In  reality,  he 
never  did  make  up  his  mind  to  it.  He  did  it,  and  in 
his  inmost  heart  he  knew  that  he  was  doing  it ;  but  all 
the  time  he  was  trying  to  deny  it,  was  wrestling  with 
agony  and  despair  in  his  soul  in  the  effort  to  do  some 
thing  else. 

He  would  go  away  in  the  morning  and  try  to  think 
about  the  book;  and  just  when  he  would  get  started, 
it  would  be  time  for  dinner,  and  there  would  be  the 
image  of  Corydon  waiting  for  him.  And  so  he  would 
go  home,  and  go  back  in  the  afternoon — and  when  he 
had  got  started  again,  it  would  be  dark.  The  next 
day,  having  explained  his  trouble,  he  would  take  his 
lunch  away  with  him;  but  in  the  forenoon  there  would 
come  a  drenching  thunder-storm,  and  he  would  have  to 
go  back  again.  Or  he  would  try  to  work  in  the  tent 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         MS 

at  night ;  and  the  wind  would  howl  and  blow  the  lamp 
so  that  he  could  not  put  his  mind  on  anything.  Nor 
did  it  avail  him  to  rail  at  himself,  to  tell  himself  that 
he  was  a  fool  for  being  at  the  mercy  of  such  mishaps. 
It  was  none  the  less  a  fact  that  he  was  at  the  mercy 
of  them,  and  that  he  could  no  longer  give  himself  up 
to  the  sway  of  his  imagination. 

And  always  there  was  Corydon,  yearning  for  his  com 
panionship.  It  had  always  been  their  idea  that  they 
should  do  the  work  together;  so  completely  would  they 
be  fused  in  the  fire  of  love,  that  she  would  share  his 
soul  states  and  write  parts  of  his  books.  But  now  that 
idea  had  to  be  abandoned ;  and  this  was  her  tragedy. 

"I  have  to  sit  and  think  of  my  health !"  she  would 
exclaim. 

"It  isn't  your  health,  dear,"  he  would  plead;  "it's 
the  health  of  the  child !" 

"I  know  that.  But  then,  am  I  always  to  sit  at  home 
and  be  placid,  while  you  go  away  to  wrestle  with  the 
angels?" 

"Not  always,  Corydon,"  he  said.  "This  will 
pass — 

"If  I  do,"  she  cried,  "I  only  stay  to  wrestle  with  the 
demons.  And  is  that  so  very  good  for  a  pregnant 
woman  ?" 

"My  dear !"  he  protested. 

"It's  just  as  I  said!"  she  went  on.  "I  ought  not  to 
have  had  the  child!  I'm  only  a  school-girl,  with  a 
school-girl's  tasks.  And  I  try  and  try,  but  I  can't  help 
it — everything  within  me  rebels  at  the  cares  of  mother 
hood."  " 

"That's  one  mood,  dear,"  he  said.  "But  you  know 
that's  not  true  always." 

"It's  all  the  clearer  to  me,"  she  insisted,  "since  we've 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

had  to  give  up  our  music.  I  can't  work  at  the  piano 
any  more — I  may  never  be  able  to." 

"But  even  if  you  could,  Corydon,  I  couldn't  afford 
to  get  you  one  now." 

"No,  of  course  not.  And  you  have  to  give  up  your 
violin !" 

"Much  time  I  have  to  practice  it  in  our  present 
plight !" 

"I  know — I  know!  But  don't  you  see,  we  lose  our 
last  hope  of  growing  together?  I've  a  vision  that 
haunts  me  all  the  time — you  going  away  to  do  your 
work,  and  staying  for  longer  and  longer  periods — and 
I  sitting  at  home  to  mind  the  baby !" 

Day  after  day  he  would  come  back,  and  she  would 
ask  him  how  the  book  was  going;  and  he  would  have 
to  answer  that  it  was  not  going  at  all.  Then,  in  his 
desperation,  he  would  make  up  his  mind  to  write  what  he 
could — to  be  content  with  this  glimpse  of  one  scene, 
and  with  that  feeble  echo  of  what  he  knew  the  next 
scene  ought  to  be;  and  he  would  bring  the  result  to 
Corydon,  and  would  discover  with  a  secret  pang  that 
she  did  not  know  the  difference.  But  then  he  would  ask 
himself — how  could  she  know  the  difference?  The  dif 
ference  did  not  exist !  His  vision  of  the  thing  had 
existed  in  himself,  and  in  himself  alone ;  if  he  never 
uttered  it,  the  world  would  never  know  what  it  might 
have  been — and  would  never  care.  Ah,  what  a  future 
was  that  to  look  forward  to — to  filling  the  ears  of  the 
world  with  lamentations  concerning  the  books  that  he 
might  have  written !  And  all  the  time  knowing  that  the 
ears  of  the  world  were  deaf  to  ever}*  sound  he  made ! 

§  12.     HE   thought   that  he   realized   the  bitterness 
of  this  tragedy  all  at  once ;  but  the  real  bitterness  was 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         245 

that  he  had  to  realize  more  and  more  of\  it  every  day. 
It  was  a  tragedy  he  had  to  live  in  the  house  with.  He 
had  to  watch  it  working  itself  out  in  all  the  little  af 
fairs  of  life ;  he  had  to  see  it  manifesting  itself  in  his 
own  soul,  and  in  the  soul  of  Cordon,  and  even  in  the 
soul  of  the  child.  Worst  of  all  to  him,  the  artist,  he 
had  to  see  it  working  itself  out  in  what  he  wrote — in 
book  after  book  that  went  out  to  represent  him  to  the 
world,  and  that  did  not  represent  him  at  all,  but  only 
represented  the  Snare  in  which  he  had  been  caught! 
It  was  one  of  the  facts  about  this  Snare,  that  there  was 
no  merciful  Keeper  to  come  and  put  the  victim  out  of 
his  misery  with  a  blow  upon  the  head ;  that  he  was  left 
alone,  to  writhe  and  twist  and  tear  himself  to  pieces, 
and  to  perish  of  slow  exhaustion.  It  was  not  a  murder 
— it  was  a  crucifixion  ! 

He  could  not  have  told  for  whom  his  heart  bled  most, 
for  himself,  or  for  Corydon.  Here  she  was,  with  her 
grim  problems  and  her  bitter  necessities ;  needing  ad 
vice  and  comfort,  needing  companionship — needing  a 
husband !  And  she  had  married  an  artist — a  reed  that 
would  grow  "nevermore  again  as  a  reed  with  the  reeds 
by  the  river !"  That  could  not  grow,  even  if  it  had 
wanted  to  !  For  it  was  quite  in  vain  that  the  world  cried 
out  to  hirn  to  settle  down  and  become  as  other  men ; 
he  could  not.  The  thing  that  was  tearing  at  his  vitals 
would  continue  to  tear ;  the  only  choice  he  had  was  be 
tween  self-expression  and  madness. 

So,  wrung  as  his  heart  was,  he  had  to  go  away  and 
work  as  he  could.  If  he  yielded  to  his  desire  and  stayed 
by  her,  then  the  book  would  not  be  written  in  time ;  and 
so  all  their  hopes  would  be  gone — they  would  never 
win  their  freedom  then !  And  he  would  explain  this  to 
her ;  with  their  relentless  devotion  to  the  truth,  they 


246  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

would  talk  it  all  out  between  them.  They  would  trace 
every  cord  and  knot  of  the  Snare.  And  Corydon  would 
grant  that  he  was  right,  and  that  she  must  submit. 
He  must  stay  away  all  day — and  all  night,  if  need  be 
— till  the  book  was  done. 

Not  that  they  were  always  able  to  settle  their  prob 
lems  in  the  cold  light  of  reason.  Sometimes  Thyrsis, 
with  his  artist's  ups  and  downs,  would  be  nervous  and 
irritable ;  he  would  manifest  impatience  over  trifles,  and 
this  would  give  rise  to  tragedies.  There  was  a  vast 
amount  of  fetching  and  emptying  of  water  to  be  done 
for  their  little  establishment ;  and  sometimes  a  man  who 
was  carrying  the  destinies  of  the  human  race  in  his 
consciousness  was  not  as  prompt  as  he  might  have  been 
in  attending  to  these  humble  tasks.  And  moreover,  the 
water  all  had  to  be  dipped  up  from  the  lake ;  and  some 
times,  when  it  was  stormy,  it  was  a  difficult  matter  to 
get  it  as  free  from  specks  as  was  needed  for  the  ablu 
tions  of  a  fastidious  young  lady  like  Corydon. 

"If  you'd  only  take  a  little  trouble !"  she  would  say. 
"Trouble!"  he  would  exclaim.     "Do  you  think  I  en 
joy  hearing  you  complain  about  it?" 

"But  Thyrsis,  this  is  dirtier  than  ever !" 
"I  know  it.     The  wind  is  blowing  harder." 

"But  if  you'd  only  reach  out  a  little  ways " 

"I  reached  out  till  I  nearly  fell  into  the  water!" 
"But  Thyrsis,  how  can  I  ever  wash  my  face?" 
And  so  it  would  go.     Thyrsis  would  be  absorbed  in 
some    especially    important    mental    operation,    and    it 
would  be  a  torment  to  him  to  have  such  things  forced 
upon  his  attention.     Corydon,  it  seemed  to  him,  was  al 
ways  at  the  mercy  of  externals ;  and  she  was  forever 
dragging  him  out  of  himself,  and  making  him  aware 
of  them.      The  frying-pan  was  not  clean   enough,   or 


THE   CORDS  ARE   TIGHTENED         247 

his  hair  was  unkempt;  his  trousers  were  ragged  or  his 
coat  was  too  small  for  him.  Was  life  always  to  con 
sist  of  such  impertinences  as  this? 

And  so  Thyrsis,  in  a  sudden  burst  of  rage,  gave  the 
water-bucket  a  kick  which  sent  it  rolling  down  the  bank, 
and  then  strode  away  to  his  work.  But  unfortunately 
his  work  was  not  of  a  sort  which  he  could  do  with  angry 
emotions  in  his  soul.  And  so  very  soon  remorse  over 
came  him.  He  returned,  to  find  that  Corydon  had 
rushed  out  to  the  end  of  the  point,  and  flung  herself 
down  upon  the  rocks  in  hysterics.  And  this,  of  course, 
was  not  a  good  thing  for  a  pregnant  woman,  and  so  he 
had  to  set  to  work  to  soothe  her. 

But  alas,  to  soothe  her  was  never  an  easy  task,  be 
cause  of  her  sensitiveness,  and  her  exalted  ideals  of 
him.  However  humbly  he  might  apologize  and  beg 
forgiveness,  there  would  remain  her  grief  that  it  had 
been  possible  for  a  quarrel  to  occur  between  them.  She 
would  drive  him  nearly  wild  by  debating  the  event,  and 
rehearsing  it  again  and  again,  trying  to  justify  her 
self  to  him,  and  him  to  himself.  Thyrsis  was  robust, 
he  wanted  to  let  the  past  take  care  of  itself;  he  would 
tell  her  of  all  the  worries  that  were  harassing  him,  and 
would  plead  with  her  to  grant  him  the  privilege  of  any 
ordinary  human  creature,  to  manifest  annoyance  now 
and  then.  And  Corydon  would  promise  it — she  would 
promise  him  anything  he  asked  for ;  but  this  was  a  boon 
it  did  not  lie  within  the  possibility  of  her  temperament 
to  grant.  He  could  be  angry  at  fate  and  at  the  world, 
and  could  rage  and  storm  at  them  all  he  pleased ;  but  he 
could  never  be  harsh  with  Corydon  without  inflicting 
upon  her  pain  that  wrecked  her,  and  wrecked  him  into 
the  bargain. 

Perhaps,  he  thought,  it  was  her  condition  that  ac- 


248  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

counted  for  this  morbidness.  She  was  liable  to  fits 
of  depression,  and  to  mysterious  illness — nausea  and 
faintness  and  what  not.  Also,  she  had  been  told  weird 
tales  about  prenatal  influences ;  and  he,  not  having  been 
educated  in  such  matters,  could  not  be  sure  what  were 
the  facts.  So,  whenever  she  had  been  unhappy,  there 
was  the  possibility  that  she  had  done  some  irreparable 
harm  to  the  child !  And  that  made  more  problems  for 
an  over-worked  and  sensitive  artist. 

He  soon  saw  that  he  had  to  suppress  forever  the  side 
of  him  that  was  stern  and  exacting.  Such  things  had 
a  place  in  his  own  life,  but  no  longer  in  Corydon's. 
Instead,  he  would  see  how  she  suffered,  and  his  heart 
would  be  wrung,  and  he  would  come  back  again  and 
again  to  comfort  her,  and  to  tell  her  how  he  loved  her, 
how  he  longed  to  do  what  was  right.  He  would  set  be 
fore  her  the  logic  of  the  situation,  so  that  if  things 
went  wrong  she  might  realize  that  it  was  neither  his 
fault  nor  hers — that  it  was  the  world,  which  kept  them 
in  this  misery,  and  shut  them  up  to  suffer  together. 
So  it  was,  all  through  their  lives,  that  their  remorseless 
reason  saved  them;  they  would  find  in  the  analysis  and 
exposition  of  the  causes  of  their  own  unhappiness  the 
one  common  satisfaction  they  had  in  life. 

§  13.  THESE  were  the  circumstances  of  the  writing 
of  "The  Hearer  of  Truth".  It  was  completed  in  six 
weeks,  and  it  did  not  satisfy  its  author,  the  finishing 
of  it  brought  him  no  joy.  But  that,  though  he  did 
not  realize  it,  was  the  one  circumstance  in  its  favor — 
the  less  it  satisfied  him,  the  more  chance  there  was  that 
the  world  would  know  what  it  was  about. 

He  had  the  manuscript  copied,  and  then  he  sent  it 
off  to  a  magazine  in  Boston,  whose  editor  had  been  one 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED 

of  his  hundred  great  men,  and  had  promised  to  read 
the  new  manuscript  at  once.  Meantime  Thyrsis  sent 
for  some  books  to  review,  and  got  to  work  at  another 
plot  to  be  submitted  to  the  editor  of  the  "Treasure 
Chest".  For  *their  own  treasure-chest  was  now  all  but 
empty,  and  one  could  not  live  forever  upon  blueberries 
and  fish. 

Day  by  day  they  waited;  and  at  last,  one  fateful 
afternoon,  the  farmer  came  with  some  provisions  and 
their  mail.  There  was  a  letter  from  Boston,  and 
Thyrsis  opened  it  and  read  as  follows: 

"I  have  read  your  manuscript,  'The  Hearer  of 
Truth',  and  I  wish  to  tell  you  of  the  very  great  pleasure 
it  has  given  me.  It  is  noble  and  fine,  and  amazingly 
clever  as  well.  I  must  say  frankly  that  I  was  astonished 
at  the  qualities  of  maturity  and  restraint  it  shows.  I 
think  it  quite  certain  that  we  shall  wish  to  use  it  as  a 
serial ;  but  before  I  can  say  anything  definite,  the  manu 
script  will  have  to  be  read  by  my  associates.  In  the 
meantime  I  wished  to  tell  you  personally  how  highly 
I  think  of  your  work." 

Thyrsis  read  this,  and  then,  without  a  word,  he 
passed  it  on  to  Corydon.  As  soon  as  the  farmer's  back 
was  turned,  the  two  fell  into  each  other's  arms,  and 
all  but  wept.  It  was  victory,  beyond  all  question.  The 
magazine  might  pay  as  much  as  five  hundred  dollars 
for  the  serial  rights — and  with  that  start,  they  would 
•urely  be  safe.  Besides  that,  it  would  mean  recognition 
for  Thyrsis — the  world  would  have  to  discuss  his  work  1 

Doing  pot-boilers  was  easy  after  such  a  triumph 
as  that.  They  even  treated  themselves  to  holidays — 
tney  purchased  a  quart  of  ice-cream  on  one  day,  and 


250  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

hired  a  boat  and  went  picnicking  on  another.  Thyrsis 
got  out  his  fiddle  once  again,  and  even  became  so  reck 
less  as  to  inquire  about  the  price  of  a  "practice-clavier" 
for  Corydon.  Also  he  began  inquiring  as  to  the  cost 
of  houses;  when  they  got  the  money  they  would  build 
themselves  a  little  cabin  here — a  cabin  just  the  size  of 
the  tent,  but  with  a  room  upstairs  where  Thyrsis  could 
do  his  work.  After  that  they  would  be  free  from  all  the 
world — they  would  never  go  back  to  be  haunted  by  the 
sight  of 

"Sorrow  barricadoed  evermore 
Within  the  walls  of  cities." 


§  14.  So  a  month  passed  by ;  and  Thyrsis  wrote 
again  to  the  editor,  and  was  told  that  they  were  still 
discussing  the  story.  And  then,  after  two  more  weeks, 
there  came  another  letter ;  and  this  was  the  way  it  read : 

"I  am  sorry  to  have  to  tell  you  that  the  decision  has 
been  adverse  to  using  your  story.  My  own  opinion  of 
it  has  not  changed  in  the  least ;  but  I  have  been  unable 
to  induce  my  associates  to  view  it  in  the  same  light. 
They  seem  to  be  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  your 
work  is  too  radical  for  us  to  put  to  the  front.  We  have 
a  very  conservative,  fastidious,  and  sophisticated  con 
stituency ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  limitations  by  which 
we  are  bound.  I  am  more  than  sorry  that  things  have 
turned  out  so,  and  I  trust  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  shall 
be  glad  to  read  anything  else  that  you  may  have  to 
submit  to  us." 

And  there  it  was !  "A  conservative,  fastidious,  and 
sophisticated  constituency!"  Thyrsis  believed  that  be 


THE   CORDS   ARE   TIGHTENED         251 

would  never  forget  that  phrase  while  he  lived.  Could 
one  get  up  a  thing  like  that  anywhere  in  the  world  save 
in  Boston? 

It  was  a  bitter  and  cruel  disappointment — the  more 
so  because  it  had  taken  six  weeks  of  his  precious  time. 
But  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  about  it  save  to  send 
off  the  manuscript  to  another  magazine.  And  when  it 
had  come  back  from  there  he  sent  it  to  another,  and  to 
yet  another — paying  each  time  a  total  of  eighty  cents 
to  the  express-company,  a  sum  which  was  very  hard  for 
him  to  spare.  To  make  an  ending  at  once  to  the  pain 
ful  episode,  he  continued  to  send  it  from  one  place  to 
another,  until  "The  Hearer  of  Truth"  had  had  the 
honor  of  being  declined  by  a  total  of  fifteen  magazines 
and  twenty-two  publishing-houses.  {JThe  pilgrimage  oc 
cupied  a  period  of  nineteen  months — after  which,  to 
Thyrsis'  great  surprise,  the  thirty-eighth  concern  of 
fered  to  publish  it.  And  so  the  book  was  brought  out, 
with  something  of  a  flourish,  and  met  with  its  thirty- 
eighth  rejection — at  the  hands  of  the  public ! 


BOOK   VII 
THE   CAPTURE   IS   COMPLETED 


The  shadow  of  a  dark  cloud  had  fallen  upon  the 
woods, and  the  voices  of  the  birds  were  strangely  hushed. 

"There  is  a  spell  about  this  place  for  me"  she  said, 
and  quoted — 

"Here  came  I  often,  often  m  old  days — 
Thyrsis  and  I,  we  still  had  Thyrsis  then!" 

"Where  is  Thyrsis  now?"  she  ashed;  and  he  smiled 
sadly,  and  responded: 

"Ah  me!  this  many  a  year 
My  pipe  is  lost,  my  shepherd' s  holiday! 
Needs  must  I  lose  them,  needs  with  heavy  heart 
Into  the  world  and  wave  of  men  depart!" 


§  1.  THEY  returned  to  the  city  early  in  October — 
not  so  much  because  they  minded  the  cold  in  the  tent, 
as  because  their  money  was  gone,  and  it  was  not  easy  to 
do  hack-work  at  a  distance.  One  had  to  be  on  the  spot, 
to  interview  the  editors,  to  study  their  whims  and  keep 
one's  self  in  their  minds ;  otherwise  some  one  else  got  the 
work. 

So  Thyrsis  came  back  to  his  "world" ;  and  he  found 
this  world  up  in  arms  against  him.  All  the  opposition 
that  he  had  ever  had  to  face  was  nothing  to  what  he 
faced  now.  Society  seemed  to  have  made  up  its  col- 
lectivejnind  that  he  should  give  in;  and  every  force  it 
could  use  was  brought  to  bear  upon  him — every  person 
he  knew  joined  in  the  assault  upon  him. 

He  was  bound  to  admit  that  they  had  all  the  argu 
ments  on  their  side.  He  had  gone  his  own  obstinate 
way,  in  defiance  of  all  advice  and  of  all  precedent ;  and 
now  he  saw  what  had  come  of  it — exactly  what  every 
common-sense  person  had  foreseen.  He  and  Corydon  had 
tried  their  "living  as  brother  and  sister" — and  here  she 
was  with  child !  And  that  was  all  right,  no  one  proposed 
to  blame  him  for  it ;  it  was  what  people  had  predicted, 
and  they  were  rather  pleased  to  have  their  predictions 
come  true — to  see  the  bubble  of  his  pretenses  burst, 
and  to  be  able  to  point  out  to  him  that  he  was  like  all 
other  men.  What  they  wanted  now  was  simply  that 
he  should  recognize  his  responsibility,  and  look  out  for 
Corydon's  welfare.  Living  in  tenement-rooms  and  in 
tents,  like  gypsies  and  savages,  was  all  right  by  way 
of  a  lark;  it  was  all  very  picturesque  and  romantic  in 

255 


256  LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

a  novel;  but  it  would  not  do  for  a  woman  who  was 
about  to  become  a  mother.  Corydon  had  been  delicately 
reared.  She  was  used  to  the  comforts  and  decencies 
of  life;  and  to  get  her  in  her  present  plight  and  then 
not  provide  these  things  for  her  would  be  the  act  of  a 
scoundrel. 

All  through  his  life  the  world  had  had  but  one  mes 
sage  for  Thyrsis:  "Go  to  work!"  From  the  world's 
point  of  view  his  languages  and  literatures,  his  music 
and  writing  were  all  play ;  to  "work"  was  to  get  a  "posi 
tion".  And  now  this  word  was  dinned  into  his  ears  day 
and  night,  the  very  stones  in  the  street  seemed  to  cry 
it  at  him — "Get  a  position!  Get  a  position!" 

As  chance  would  have  it,  the  position  was  all  ready. 
In  the  higher  regions  they  were  preparing  to  open  a 
branch  of  a  great  family  establishment  abroad,  and 
Thyrsis  was  invited  to  take  charge  of  it.  He  would  be 
paid  three  thousand  dollars  a  year  at  the  start,  and  two 
or  three  times  as  much  ultimately ;  and  what  more  could 
he  want?  He  knew  nothing  about  the  work,  but  they 
knew  his  abilities — that  if  he  would  undertake  it,  and 
give  his  attention  to  it,  he  would  succeed.  He  would 
meet  people  of  culture,  they  argued,  and  be  broadened 
by  contact  with  men  ;  as  for  Corydon,  it  would  make  her 
whole  life  over.  Surely,  for  her  sake,  he  could  not  re 
fuse! 

Thyrsis  had  foreseen  just  such  things.  He  had 
braced  himself  to  meet  the  shock,  and  the  world  found 
him  with  his  hands  clenched  and  his  jaws  set.  There 
was  no  use  in  arguing  with  him,  he  had  but  one  answer — 
"No!  No!  No!"  He  would  not  take  that  position,  and 
he  would  not  take  any  other  position — neither  now,  nor 
at  any  future  time.  He  was  not  a  business-man,  he  was 
an  artist ;  and  an  artist  he  would  remain  to  the  end. 
It  might  as  well  be  understood  at  the  outset ;  there  was 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED    257 

nothing  that  the  world  could  do  or  say  to  him  that 
would  move  him  one  inch.  They  might  starve  him,  they 
might  kill  him,  they  might  do  what  they  could  or  would 
— hut  never  would  he  give  in. 

"But — what  are  you  going  to  do?"  they  cried. 

He  answered,  "I  am  going  to  write  my  books." 

"But  you  have  already  written  two  books,  and  noth 
ing  has  come  of  them !" 

"Something  may  come  of  them  yet,"  he  said.  "And 
if  it  doesn't,  I  shall  simply  go  on  and  write  another, 
and  another,  and  another.  I  shall  continue  to  write  so 
long  as  I  have  the  strength  left  in  me;  I  shall  be  trying 
to  write  when  I  die." 

And  so,  while  they  argued  and  pleaded  and  scolded 
and  wept,  he  stood  in  silence.  They  could  not  under 
stand  him — he  smiled  bitterly  as  he  realized  how  im 
possible  it  was  for  them  to  understand  even  the  simplest 
thing  about  him.  There  was  the  dapper  corporation 
lawyer  and  his  exquisite  young  wife,  who  came  to  argue 
about  it ;  and  Thyrsis  asked  them  not  to  tell  Corydon 
why  they  had  come.  He  saw  them  look  at  each  other 
significantly,  and  he  could  read  their  thought — that  he 
was  afraid  of  his  wife's  importunities.  And  how  could 
he  explain  to  them  what  he  had  really  meant — that  if 
they  had  told  Corydon  they  had  come  to  persuade  him 
to  give  up  his  art,  Corydon  would  probably  have  found 
it  impossible  to  be  even  decently  polite  to  them ! 

§  2.  So  Thyrsis  went  away,  carrying  the  burden  of 
the  scorn  and  contempt  of  every  human  soul  he  knew. 
It  was  in  truth  a  dark  hour  in  his  life.  He  was  at  his 
wit's  end  for  the  bare  necessities.  He  had  reached  the 
city  with  less  money  in  his  pocket  than  he  had  had  the 
year  before;  and  all  the  ways  by  which  he  had  got 


£58  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

money  seemed  to  have  failed  him  at  once.  All  the  editors 
who  published  book-reviews  seemed  to  have  a  stock  on 
hand;  or  else  to  know  of  people  whose  style  of  writing 
pleased  their  readers  better.  And  none  of  them  seemed 
to  fancy  any  ideas  for  articles  that  Thyrsis  had  to 
suggest. 

Worst  of  all,  the  editor  of  the  '"Treasure  Chest" 
turned  down  the  pot-boiler  which  he  had  been  writing 
up  in  the  country.  He  would  not  say  anything  very 
definite  about  it — he  just  didn't  like  the  story — it  had 
not  come  up  to  the  promise  of  the  scenario.  He  hinted 
that  perhaps  Thyrsis  was  not  as  much  interested  in 
his  work  as  he  had  been  before.  It  seemed  to  be  lack 
ing  in  vitality,  and  the  style  was  not  so  good.  Thyrsis 
offered  to  rewrite  parts  of  the  story;  but  no,  said  the 
editor,  he  did  not  care  for  the  story  at  all.  He  would 
be  willing  to  have  Thyrsis  try  another,  but  he  was  pretty 
well  supplied  with  serials  just  then,  and  could  not  give 
much  encouragement. 

Corydon  had  yielded  to  her  parents  and  gone  to  stay 
with  them  for  a  while;  and  Thyrsis  had  got  his  own 
expenses  down  to  less  than  five  dollars  a  week — includ 
ing  such  items  as  stationery  and  postage  on  his  manu 
scripts.  And  still,  he  could  not  get  this  five  dollars. 
In  his  desperation  he  followed  the  cheap  food  idea  to 
extremes,  and  there  were  times  when  an  invitation  to 
an  honest  meal  was  something  he  looked  forward  to  for 
a  week.  And  day  after  day  he  wandered  about  the 
streets,,  racking  his  brains  for  new  ideas,  for  new  plans 
to  try>  for  new  hopes  of  deliverance. 

In  later  years  he  looked  back  upon  it  all — knowing 
then  the  depth  of  the  pit  into  which  he  had  fallen, 
knowing  the  full  power  of  the  forces  that  were  ranged 
against  him — and  he  marvelled  that  he  had  ever  had  the 


THE   CAPTURE   IS    COMPLETED 

courage  to  hold  out.  But  in  truth  the  idea  of  sur 
render  did  not  occur  to  him;  the  possibility  of  it  did 
not  lie  in  his  character.  He  had  his  message  to  de 
liver.  That  was  what  he  was  in  the  world  for,  and  for 
nothing  else ;  and  he  must  deliver  what  he  could  of  it. 
He  would  go  alone,  and  his  vision  would  come  to  him. 
It  would  come  to  him,  radiant,  marvellous,  overwhelm 
ing  ;  there  had  never  been  anything  like  it  in  the  world, 
there  might  never  be  anything  like  it  in  the  world 
again.  And  if  only  he  could  get  the  world  to  realize 
it — if  only  he  could  force  some  hint  of  it  into  the  mind 
of  one  living  person !  It  was  impossible  not  to  think 
that  some  day  that  person  would  be  discovered — to 
believe  otherwise  would  be  to  give  the  whole  world  up 
for  damned.  '  He  would  imagine  that  chance  person 
reading  his  first  book ;  he  would  imagine  the  publishers 
and  their  advisers  reading  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" — 
might  it  not  be  that  at  this  very  hour  some  living  soul 
was  in  the  act  of  finding  him  out?  At  any  rate,  all 
that  he  could  do  was  to  try,  and  to  keep  on  trying; 
to  embody  his  vision  in  just  as  many  forms  as  possible, 
and  to  scatter  them  just  as  widely  as  possible.  It  was 
like  shooting  arrows  into  the  air;  but  he  would  go  on 
to  shoot  while  there  was  one  arrow  left  in  his  quiver. 

§  3.  THYRSIS  reasoned  the  problem  out  for  himself ; 
he  saw  what  he  wanted,  and  that  it  was  a  rational  and 
honest  thing  for  him  to  want.  He  was  a  creative  artist, 
engaged  in  learning  his  trade.  When  he  had  completed 
his  training,  he  would  hot  work  for  himself,  he  would 
work  to  bring  joy  and  faith  to  millions  of  human  beings, 
perhaps  for  ages  after.  And  meantime,  while  he  was 
in  the  practice-stage,  he  asked  for  the  bare  necessities 
of  existence. 


260  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Nor  was  it  as  if  he  were  an  utter  tyro;  he  had  given 
proof  of  his  power.  He  had  written  two  books,  which 
some  of  the  best  critics  in  the  country  had  praised. 
To  this  people  made  answer  that  it  was  no  one's  busi 
ness  to  look  out  for  genius  and  give  it  a  chance  to 
live.  But  with  Thyrsis  it  was  never  any  argument  to 
show  that  a  thing  did  not  exist,  if  it  was  a  thing 
which  he  knew  ought  to  exist.  He  looked  back  over 
the  history  of  art,  and  saw  the  old  hideous  state  of 
affairs— saw  genius  perishing  of  starvation  and  misery, 
and  men  erecting  monuments  to  it  wrhen  it  was  dead.. 
He  saw  empty-headed  rich  people  paying  fortunes  for 
the  manuscripts  of  poems  which  all  the  world  had  once 
rejected;  he  saw  the  seven  towns  contending  for  Homer 
dead,  through  which  the  living  Homer  begged  his  bread. 
And  Thyrsis  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that  a 
thing  so  monstrous  could  continue  to  exist  forever. 

There  was  no  other  department  of  human  activity 
of  which  it  was  true.  If  a  man  wanted  to  be  a  preacher, 
he  would  find  that  people  had  set  up  divinity-schools 
and  established  scholarships  for  which  he  could  contend. 
And  the  same  was  true  if  he  wished  to  be  an  engineer, 
or  an  architect,  or  a  historian,  or  a  biologist ;  it  was 
only  the  creative  artist  of  whom  no  one  had  a  thought 
— the  creative  artist,  who  needed  it  most  of  all!  For 
his  was  the  most  exacting  work,  his  was  the  longest 
and  severest  apprenticeship. 

Brooding  over  this,  Thyrsis  hit  upon  another  plan. 
He  drew  up  a  letter,  in  which  he  set  forth  what  he 
wanted,  and  stated  what  he  had  so  far  done;  he  quoted 
the  opinions  of  his  work  that  had  been  written  by  men- 
of-letters,  and  offered  to  submit  the  books  and  manu 
scripts  about  which  these  opinions  had  been  written. 
He  sent  a  copy  of  this  letter  to  the  president  of  each 


THE   CAPTURE   IS   COMPLETED 

of  the  leading  universities  in  the  country,  to  find  otit  if 
there  was  in  a  single  one  of  them  any  fellowship  or 
scholarship  or  prize  of  any  sort,  which  could  be  won 
by  such  creative  literary  work.  Of  those  who  replied 
to  him,  many  admitted  that  his  point  was  well  taken, 
that  there  should  have  been  such  provision ;  but  one  and 
all  they  agreed  that  none  existed.  There  were  re 
wards  for  studying  the  work  of  the  past,  but  never  for 
producing  new  work,  no  matter  how  good  it  might  be. 

Then  another  plan  occurred  to  him.  He  wrote  an 
anonymous  article,  setting  forth  some  of  his  amusing 
experiences,  and  contrasting  the  credit  side  of  the  "pot- 
boiling"  ledger  with  the  debit  side  of  the  "real  art" 
ledger.  This  article  was  picturesque,  and  a  magazine 
published  it,  paying  twenty-five  dollars  for  it,  and  so 
giving  him  another  month's  lease  of  life.  But  that  was 
all  that  came  of  it — there  was  no  rich  man  who  wrote 
to  the  magazine  to  ask  who  this  tormented  genius  might 
be. 

Then  Thyrsis,  in  his  desperation,  joined  the  ranks 
of  the  begging  letter-writers.  He  would  send  long  ac 
counts  of  his  plight  to  eminent  philanthropists — having 
no  idea  that  the  secretaries  of  eminent  philanthropists 
throAY  out  basketsful  of  such  letters  every  day.  He 
would  read  in  the  papers  of  some  public-spirited  enter 
prise — he  would  hear  of  this  man  or  that  woman  who 
was  famous  for  his  or  her  interest  in  helpful  things — 
and  he  would  sit  down  and  write  these  people*  that  he 
was  starving,  and  implore  them  to  read  his  book.  In 
later  years,  when  he  came  to  know  of  some  of  these 
newspaper  idols,  it  was  a- comfort  to  him  to  feel  certain 
that  his  letters  had  been  thrown  away  unread. 

Also  he  begged  from  everybody  he  met,  under  what 
ever  circumstances  he  met  theiHt  If  by  any  chance  the 


262  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

person  might  be  imagined  to  possess  money,  sooner  or 
later  would  come  some  hour  of  distress,  when  Thyrsis 
would  be  driven  to  try  to  borrow.  On  one  occasion  he 
counted  it  up,  and  there  were  forty-three  individuals 
to  whom  he  had  made  himself  a  nuisance.  With  half 
a  dozen  of  them  he  had  actually  succeeded ;  but  always 
promising  to  return  the  money  when  his  next  check 
came  in — and  always  scrupulously  doing  this.  There 
was  never  anyone  who  rose  to  the  understanding  of  what 
he  really  wanted — a  free  gift,  for  the  sake  of  his  art. 
There  was  never  anyone  who  could  understand  his  utter 
shamelessness  about  it;  that  fervor  of  consecration 
which  made  it  impossible  for  a  man  to  humiliate  him,  or 
to  insult  him — to  do  anything  save  to  write  himself  down 
a  dead  soul. 

People  were  quite  clear  in  their  views  upon  this  ques 
tion  ;  a  man  must  earn  his  own  way  in  the  world.  And 
that  was  all  right,  if  a  man  were  in  the  world  for  him 
self.  But  what  if  he  were  working  for  humanity,  and 
had  no  time  to  think  about  himself?  Was  that  truly 
a  disgraceful  thing?  Take  Jesus,  for  instance;  ought 
he  to  have  kept  at  his  carpenter's  trade,  instead  of 
preaching  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount?  Or  was  it  that 
his  right  to  preach  the  Sermon  was  determined  by 
the  size  of  the  collection  he  could  take  among  the 
audience? 

And  then,  while  he  pondered  this  problem  of  "earning 
one's  own  way,"  Thyrsis  was  noting  the  lives  of  the 
people  who  were  preaching  it.  What  were  they  doing 
to  earn  the  luxuries  they  enjoyed?  Even  granting  that 
one  recognized  their  futile  benevolence  as  justifying 
them  personally — what  about  the  tens  of  thousands  of 
others  who  lived  in  utter  idleness,  squandering  in  self- 
indulgence  and  ostentation  huge  fortunes  of  which  they 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   263 

had  never  earned  a  penny  ?  The  boy  could  not  go  upon 
the  streets  of  the  city  without  having  this  monstrous 
fact  flaunted  in  his  face  in  a  thousand  forms.  So  many 
millions  for  folly  and  vice,  and  not  one  cent  for  his 
art !  This  was  the  thing  upon  which  he  was  brooding 
day  and  night — and  filling  his  soul  with  an  awful  bit 
terness  which  was  to  horrify  the  world  in  later  years, 

§  4.  HE  might  not  come  to  see  Corydon  in  her 
home;  but  she  would  meet  him  in  the  street,  and  they 
would  walk  in  the  park,  a  pitiful  and  mournful  pair. 
They  had  to  walk  slowly,  and  often  he  would  have  to 
help  her,  for  her  burden  had  now  become  great.  She 
had  altered  all  her  dresses,  and  she  wore  a  long  cape, 
and  even  then  was  not  able  to  hide  the  disfigurement  of 
her  person.  They  would  sit  upon  a  bench  in  the  cold, 
and  talk  about  the  latest  aspects  of  his  struggle,  what 
he  was  doing  and  what  he  hoped  to  do.  Corydon  would 
bring  him  the  opinions  of  a  few  more  members  of  the 
bourgeois  world,  and  they  would  curse  this  world  and 
these  people  together.  For  there  was  no  more  thought 
of  giving  up  on  Corydon's  side  than  there  was  on  his ; 
it  was  not  for  nothing  that  he  had  talked  to  her  upon 
the  hill-top  in  the  moonlight. 

Meanwhile,  however,  time  was  passing,  and  the  pros 
pect  of  her  approaching  confinement  hung  over  them 
like  a  black  thunder-cloud.  It  came  on  remorselessly, 
menacingly.  The  event  was  due  about  Christmas  time, 
and  there  must  be  some  money  then — there  must  be  some 
money  then  !  But  where  was  it  to  be  found? 

Thyrsis  had  tried  another  story  for  the  "Treasure 
Chest,"  but  the  editor  had  not  liked  his  plot.  Also  he 
was  taking  "The  Hearer  of  Truth"  from  one  place  to 
another ;  but  with  less  and  less  hope,  as  he  learned  from 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

various  editors  and  publishers  how  radical  and  subver 
sive  they  considered  it.  He  took  it  now  mechanically, 
as  a  matter  of  form — making  it  his  rule  always  to 
count  upon  rejection,  so  that  he  might  never  be  disap 
pointed. 

One  of  Corydon's  rich  friends  had  told  her  of  a 
certain  famous  surgeon,  and  Corydon  had  gone  to  see 
him.  He  had  a  beautiful  private  hospital,  and  his  prices 
were  unthinkable;  but  he  had  seemed  to  be  interested 
in  her,  and  when  she  told  him  her  circumstances,  he  had 
said  that  he  would  try  to  "meet  her  halfway."  But 
even  with  the  reductions  he  quoted,  it  would  cost  them 
nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars ;  and  how  could 
Thyrsis  get  such  a  sum?  Even  if  the  surgeon  were 
willing  to  wait — what  prospect  was  there  that  he  could 
ever  get  it? 

This  again  was  the  curse  of  their  leisure-class  up 
bringing.  They  did  not  know  how  poor  women  had  their 
babies,  and  they  shrunk  from  the  thought  of  finding 
it  out.  Corydon  had  met  this  man,  and  had  been  im 
pressed  by  him;  and  Thyrsis  realized,  even  if  she  did 
not,  that  she  had  got  her  heart  set  upon  the  plan.  And 
if  he  did  not  make  it  possible,  and  then  anything  were 
to  go  wrong  with  her,  how  would  he  ever  be  able  to  for 
give  himself?  This  event  would  come  but  once,  and 
might  mean  so  much  to  them. 

So  he  said  to  himself  that  he  would  "raise  the 
money".  But  the  days  passed  and  became  weeks,  and 
the  weeks  became  months,  and  there  was  no  sign  of  the 
raising.  And  then  suddenly  came  one  of  those  shafts 
of  sunlight  through  the  clouds — one  of  those  will-o'- 
the-wisps  that  were  forever  luring  Thyrsis  into  the 
swamps.  Another  editor  liked  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" ; 
another  editor  said  that  it  was  a  great  piece  of  litera- 


THE   CAPTURE    IS   COMPLETED        2 

ture,  and  that  he  would  surely  use  it!  So  Thyrsi* 
went  to  the  great  surgeon  and  told  him  that  he  would 
be  able  to  pay  him  in  a  little  while;  and  the  arrange 
ment  was  made  for  Corydon  to  come.  And  then  the 
editor  put  the  "great  piece  of  literature"  away  in  his 
desk,  and  forgot  all  about  it  for  a  month — while  Thyrsis 
waited,  day  by  day,  in  an  agony  of  suspense. 

The  appointed  time  had  come — the  day  when  Cory 
don  must  go  to  the  hospital ;  and  still  the  editor  had  not 
reported,  and  there  was  only  fifteen  or  twenty  dollars, 
earned  by  weeks  of  verse-writing  and  reviewing.  So 
in  desperation  Thyrsis  made  up  his  mind  to  give  up  his 
violin.  He  had  paid  ninety  dollars  for  it  three  years 
before;  and  now,  after  taking  it  round  among  the 
dealers,  he  sold  it  for  thirty-five  dollars. 

So,  to  the  very  gateway  of  life  itself,  Thyrsis  was 
hounded  by  these  spectres  of  want;  even  to  the  hospi 
tal  they  came,  and  followed  him  inside.  Here  was  a 
beautiful  place,  a  revelation  to  him  of  the  possibilities 
of  civilization  and  science.  But  it  was  all  for  the  rich 
and  prosperous,  it  was  not  for  him ;  he  felt  that  he  had 
no  business  to  be  there. 

What  a  contrast  it  all  made  with  the  tenement-room 
in  which  he  had  to  house !  Here  were  glimpses  to  be 
had  of  rich  women,  soft-skinned  and  fair,  clad  in 
morning-gowns  of  gorgeous  hue ;  here  were  baskets  of 
expensive  fruits  and  armf uls  of  sweet-scented  flowers ; 
and  here  was  he  with  his  worn  clothing  and  his  hag 
gard  face,  his  hungry  stomach  and  still  hungrier  heart ! 
Must  not  all  these  people  know  that  he  had  had  to 
ask  for  special  rates,  and  then  for  credit  on  top  of  that? 
Must  they  not  all  know  that  he  was  a  failure — that 
most  worthless  of  all  worthless  creatures,  the  man  who 
cannot  support  his  family?  What  did  it  mean  to  them 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

vf  he  had  written  masterpieces  of  literature — what 
rwould  it  avail  with  them  that  he  was  the  bearer  of  a 
new  religion!  Thyrsisv  had  heard  too  much  of  the 
world's  opinion  of  him;  he  shrunk  from  contact  with 
his  fellow-creatures,  reading  an  insult  into  every  glance. 
He  was  like  a  dog  that  has  been  too  much  beaten,  and 
cringes  even  before  it  is  struck. 

§  5.  BUT  these  thoughts  were  for  himself ;  he  did 
not  whisper  them  to  Corydon.  However  people  might 
despise  him,  they  did  not  blame  her,  and  there  was  no 
need  of  this  bitterness  in  her  cup.  Corydon  was  beauti 
ful — ah  God,  how  beautiful  she  looked,  lying  there  in 
the  snowy  bed,  with  the  snowy  lace  about  her  neck  and 
arms !  How  like  the  very  goddess  of  motherhood  she 
looked,  a  halo  of  light  about  her  forehead.  She,  too, 
must  have  flowers,  to  whisper  to  her  of  hope  and  joy; 
and  so  he  had  brought  her  three  pitiful  little  pinks, 
which  he  had  purchased  from  a  lame  girl  upon  the  cor 
ner.  The  tears  started  into  Corydon's  eyes  as  she  saw 
these — for  she  knew  that  he  had  gone  without  a  part 
of  his  dinner  in  order  to  bring  them  to  her.  ' 

Everybody  had  come  to  love  her  already,  he  could 
see.  How  gentle  and  kind  they  were  to  her;  afid 
how  skillfully  they  did  everything  for  her!  His  heart 
was  full  of  thankfulness  that  he  had  been  able  to  bring 
her  to  this  haven  of  refuge.  And  resolutely  he  put 
aside  all  thoughts  of  his  own  humiliation — he  swept 
his  mind  clear  of  everything  else,  and  went  with  her  to 
face  this  new  and  supreme  experience  of  her  life. 

"You  will  stay  with  me?"  she  had  pleaded;  and  he 
had  promised  that  he  would  stay.  She  could  not  bear  to 
have  him  out  of  her  sight  at  all,  and  so  they  made  him 
a  bed  upon  the  couch,  and  he  spent  the  night  there ;  and 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   267 

through  the  next  day  he  sat  with  her  and  read  to  her. 
But  now  and  then  he  would  know  that  her  thoughts  had 
wandered,  and  he  would  look  at  her  and  see  her  eyes  wide 
with  fear.  "Oh,  Thyrsis,"  she  would  whisper,  "I'm 
only  a  child;  and  I'm  not  fit  to  be  a  mother!" 

He  would  try  to  comfort  her  and  soothe  her.  *But 
in  truth,  he  too  was  full  of  fears  and  anxieties.  He 
had  felt  the  dome-like  shape  within  her  abdomen,  which 
they  said  was  the  head  of  the  child ;  and  he  could 
not  conceive  how  it  was  ever  to  be  got  out.  But  they 
told  him  that  the  thing  had  happened  before.  There 
was  nothing  for  either  of  them  to  do  but  to  wait. 

They  were  in  the  hands  of  Nature,  who  had  brought 
them  thus  far,  who  had  had  her  will  with  them  so 
utterly.  And  now  her  purpose  was  to  be  revealed  to 
them — now  they  were  to  know  the  wherefore  of  all  that 
they  had  done.  They  were  like  two  children,  travelling 
through  a  dark  valley ;  they  walked  hand  in  hand,  lift 
ing  their  eyes  to  the  mountain-tops,  and  seeking  the 
first  signs  of  the  coming  light. 

§  6.  OUTSIDE,  whenever  they  opened  the  window, 
they  could  hear  the  noise  of  the  busy  city ;  and  it  seemed 
so  strange  that  street-cars  should  jangle  on,  and  news 
boys  shout,  and  tired  men  hurry  home  to  their  dinners 
— while  such  a  thing  as  this  was  preparing.  Thyrsis 
gave  utterance  to  the  thought;  and  the  doctor,  who 
was  in  the  room,  smiled  and  responded,  "It  happens 
twice  every  second  in  the  world  I" 

This  was  the  house-physician,  who  was  to  take  charge 
of  the  case ;  a  young  man,  handsome  and  rather  dapper. 
He  went  about  his  work  with  an  air  of  its  being  an  old 
story  to  him — an  air  which  was  at  once  reassuring  and 


268  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

disturbing.  The  two  sat  and  watched  him,  while  he 
made  his  preparations. 

He  had  two  white-gowned  nurses  with  him,  and  he 
spoke  to  them  for  the  most  part  in  nods.  One  of  them 
was  elderly  and  grey-haired,  and  apparently  his  main 
reliance ;  the  other  was  young  and  pretty,  and  her  heart 
went  out  to  Corydon.  She  sat  by  the  bedside  and  con 
fided  to  her  that  she  was  a  pupil,  and  that  this  was 
only  her  third  "case". 

"Will  it  hurt  me  much?"  the  girl  asked,  weakly. 

And  then  suddenly,  before  there  was  time  for  an  an 
swer,  she  turned  white,  and  clutched  Thyrsis'  hand  with 
a  low  cry. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  whispered. 

Her  fingers  closed  upon  his  convulsively,  and  she 
started  up,  crying  aloud. 

The  doctor  was  standing  by  the  window,  opening  a 
case  of  instruments.  He  did  not  even  turn. 

"Doctor !"  Thyrsis  cried,  in  alarm. 

He  put  the  case  down  and  came  toward  the  bed.  "I 
guess  there  is  nothing  wrong,"  he  said,  with  a  slight 
smile.  He  laid  his  hand  upon  the  shuddering  girl. 

"It  is  all  right,"  he  said,  "I  shall  examine  her  in  a 
few  moments." 

He  turned  away,  while  Thyrsis  and  the  young  nurse 
held  Corydon's  hand  and  whispered  to  her  soothingly. 

She  sank  back  and  lay  tossing  from  side  to  side, 
moaning;  and  meantime  the  doctor  went  quietly  on,  ar 
ranging  his  basins  and  bottles,  and  giving  his  orders. 
Then  finally  he  came  and  made  his  examination. 

"She  is  doing  very  well,"  he  said,  "and  now,  Miss 
Mary,  I  have  an  engagement  for  the  theatre  for  this 
evening.  I  think  there  will  be  no  need  of  me  for  some 
hours." 


THE    CAPTURE   IS   COMPLETED        269 

Thyrsis  started,  aghast.     "Doctor !"  he  cried. 

"What  is  it?"  asked  the  other. 

"Something  might  happen!"  he  exclaimed. 

"I  shall  be  only  two  or  three  blocks  away,"  was  the 
reply.  "They  will  send  for  me  if  there  is  need." 

"But  this  pain!"  cried  Thyrsis,  excitedly.  "What 
is  she  to  do?" 

The  man  stood  by  the  bedside,  washing  his  hands. 
"You  cannot  have  a  child-birth  without  pain,"  he  said. 
"These  are  merely  false  pains,  as  we  call  them ;  the  real 
birth-pains  may  not  come  for  hours — perhaps  not  until 
morning.  There  are  membranes  which  have  to  be 
broken,  and  muscles  which  have  to  be  stretched — and 
there  is  no  way  of  doing  it  but  this  way." 

He  stood  with  his  hand  on  the  doorknob.  "Do  not 
be  worried,"  he  said.  "Whatever  happens,  the  attend 
ant  will  know  what  to  do." 

"The  theatre !"  It  seemed  so  strange !  To  be  sure, 
it  was  unreasonable — if  a  man  had  several  cases  each 
week  to  attend  to,  he  could  not  be  expected  to  suffer 
with  each  one.  But  at  least  he  need  not  have  men 
tioned  the  theatre!  It  gave  one  such  a  strange  feeling 
of  isolation ! 

§  7.  HOWEVER,  he  was  gone,  and  Thyrsis  turned 
to  Corydon,  who  lay  moaning  feebly.  It  was  like  a 
knife  cutting  her,  she  said;  she  could  not  bear  to  lie 
down,  and  when  she  tried  to  sit  up  she  could  not  en 
dure  the  weight  of  her  own  body.  She  found  it  helped 
her  for  Thyrsis  to  support  her,  and  so  he  sat  beside  her, 
holding  her  tightly,  while  she  wrestled  with  her  task. 
The  nurse  fanned  her  brow,  on  which  the  sweat  stood 
in  drops. 

Thyrsis'  position  strained  every  musck  in  his  body; 


270  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

it  made  each  minute  seem  an  hour.  But  he  clung  there, 
till  his  head  reeled.  Anything  to  help  her — anything, 
if  only  he  could  have  helped  her ! 

But  there  was  no  help ;  she  was  gone  alone  into  the 
silent  chamber  of  pain,  where  there  comes  no  company, 
no  friend,  no  love.  His  spirit  cried  out  to  her,  but  she 
heard  him  not — she  was  alone,  alone !  Is  there  any 
solitude  that  the  desert  or  the  ocean  knows,  that  is  like 
the  solitude  of  suffering? 

It  would  come  over  her  in  spasms,  and  Thyrsis  could 
feel  her  body  quiver ;  it  would  be  all  he  could  do  to  hold 
her.  And  minute  after  minute,  hour  after  hour,  it  was 
the  same,  without  a  moment's  respite — until  she  broke 
into  sobbing,  crying  that  she  could  not  bear  it,  that 
she  could  not  bear  it !  She  clutched  wildly  at  Thyrsis' 
hand,  and  her  arms  shook  like  a  leaf. 

He  ran  in  fright  for  the  elder  nurse,  who  had  left 
the  room.  She  came  and  questioned  Corydon,  and 
shook  her  head.  "There  is  nothing  to  be  done,"  she 
said. 

'  "But  something  is  wrong !"  Thyrsis  cried.  He  had 
been  reading  a  book,  and  his  mind  was  full  of  images 
of  all  sorts  of  accidents  and  horrors,  of  monstrosities 
and  "false  presentations."  "You  must  send  for  the 
doctor,"  he  repeated,  "I  know  there  must  be  something 
wrong !" 

"I  will  send  for  the  doctor  if  you  wish,"  was  the 
reply.  "But  you  must  order  it.  The  birth  has  not 
yet  begun,  you  know — when  it  does  the  character  of 
the  pains  will  change  altogether,  and  she  will  know. 
Meantime  there  is  nothing  whatever  for  the  doct'or  to 
do." 

"He  might  give  her  an  opiate !"  Thyrsis  exclaimed. 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   271 

"If  he  did,"  said  the  woman,  "that  would  stop  the 
birth.  And  it  must  come." 

So  they  turned  once  more  to  the  task.  Thyrsis  bore 
it  until  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  body  was  on  fire ;  then 
he  asked  the  nurse  to  take  his  place.  He  reeled  as  he 
tried  to  walk  to  the  sofa ;  he  flung  himself  down  and 
lay  panting.  Outside  he  could  still  hear  the  busy 
sounds  of  the  street — the  world  was  going  on  its  way, 
unknowing,  unheeding.  There  came  a  chorus  of  merry 
laughter  to  him — his  soul  was  black  with  revolt. 

He  went  back  to  his  post,  biting  his  lips  together. 

She  was  only  a  child — she  was  too  tender ;  it  was 
monstrous,  he  cried.  Why,  she  was  being  torn  to  pieces  ! 
She  writhed  and  quiyered,  until  he  thought  she  was  in 
convulsions.  And  then,  little  by  little,  all  this  faded 
from  his  thoughts ;  he  had  his  own  pain  to  bear.  He 
must  hold  her  just  so,  with  the  grip  of  a  wrestler;  his 
arms  ached,  and  his  temples  throbbed,  and  he  fought 
with  himself  and  whispered  to  himself — he  would  stay 
there  until  he  dropped. 

Would  the  doctor  never  come?  It  was  preposterous 
for  him  to  leave  her  like  this.  The  time  passed  on ;  he 
was  wild  with  impatience,  and  suddenly  Corydon  sank 
back  and  burst  into  tears.  He  could  stand  it  no  more, 
and  sent  for  the  nurse  again. 

"You  must  send  for  the  doctor !"  he  cried. 

"He  has  just  come  in,"  the  woman  answered;  "I 
heard  him  close  the  door." 

The  doctor  entered  the  room,  softly.  He  was  per 
fectly  groomed,  clad  in  evening-dress,  and  with  his 
gloves  and  his  silk  hat  in  his  hand.  Thyrsis  hated  him 
at  that  moment — hated  him  with  the  fury  of  some 
tortured  beast.  He  was  only  an  assistant ;  and  were 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

not  assistants  notoriously  careless?  Why  had  the  great 
surgeon  himself  not  come  to  see  to  it? 

"How  does  she  bear  it?"  he  said,  to  the  nurse;  and 
he  took  off  his  overcoat  and  coat,  and  rolled  up  his 
sleeves,  while  she  reported  progress.  Then  he  felt 
Corydon's  pulse,  and  after  washing  his  hands,  made 
another  examination.  Thyrsis  watched  him  with  his 
heart  in  his  mouth. 

He  rose  without  saying  anything. 

"Has  it  presented?"  the  nurse  asked. 

"Not  yet,"  he  said,  and  turned  to  look  at  the  temper 
ature  of  the  room. 

It  was  so,  then — there  was  nothing  to  be  done ! 
Thyrsis  was  dazed — he  could  hardly  believe  it.  He  had 
never  dreamed  it  could  be  anything  like  this. 

"How  long  is  this  to  last,  doctor?"  he  cried.  "She 
is  suffering  so  horribly!" 

"I  fear  it  will  be  until  morning,"  he  said  — "it  is  a 
question  of  the  rigidity  of  certain  muscles.  But  you 
need  not  be  alarmed,  she  is  doing  very  well." 

He  spoke  a  few  words  to  the  patient,  and  then 
turned  towards  the  door.  "I  shall  sleep  in  the  next 
room,"  he  said  to  his  assistant;  "you  may  call  me  at 
any  time." 

§  8.  So  the  two  went  apart  again ;  and  the  leaden- 
footed  hours  crept  by,  and  the  girl  still  wrestled  with 
the  fiend.  The  young  nurse  was  asleep  on  the  couch, 
and  the  elder  sat  dozing  in  her  chair ;  the  two  were 
alone — all  alone !  One  of  the  window-shades  was  raised, 
and  Thyrsis  could  see  far  over  the  tops  of  the  build 
ings.  Somewhere  out  there  was  another  single  light, 
where  perhaps  some  other  soul  counted  the  fiery  pulses 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   273 

of  torture.  A  death — or  another  birth,  perhaps !  The 
doctor  had  said  it  happened  twice  every  second ! 

Thyrsis  was  unskilled  in  pain,  and  perhaps  he  bore 
it  ill ;  he  feared  that  the  nurses  thought  so  too — that 
Corydon  called  too  often  for  something,  or  cried  out 
too  much  in  mere  aimless  misery. 

But  the  time  sped  on,  and  at  last  a  faint  streak  of 
day  appeared  in  the  sky,  and  the  shadows  began  to 
pale  in  the  room.  Thyrsis  started,  realizing  that  it 
was  morning.  He  had  given  up  the  morning,  as  a 
thing  that  would  never  come  again.  He  insisted  upon 
sending  for  the  doctor,  who  came,  striving  not  to 
yawn,  but  to  look  pleased.  Once  more  he  shook  his 
head;  there  was  nothing  to  do. 

The  street  began  to  waken.  The  milkman  came,  his 
cans  rattling;  now  and  then  he  shouted  to  his  horse, 
or  whistled,  or  banged  upon  a  gate.  Then  the  sun 
came  streaming  into  the  room.  The  newsboys  began 
to  call — the  young  nurse  woke  up  and  began  to 
straighten  her  hair.  The  elder  nurse  also  opened  her 
eyes,  but  did  not  stir ;  she  seemed  to  challenge  anyone 
to  assert  that  she  had  ever  been  asleep. 

"Perhaps,  Miss  Mary,"  ventured  the  young  nurse, 
timidly,  "we  had  best  prepare  the  patient." 

Corydon  seemed  to  rest  a  little  easier  now,  and  they 
carried  her  and  laid  her  on  the  couch.  They  made  the 
bed,  with  many  sheets  and  with  elaborate  care ;  and  then 
they  brought  her  back  and  dressed  her,  putting  a  short 
gown  upon  her,  and  drawing  long  white  bags  over  her 
limbs.  Ah,  how  white  she  was,  and  what  fearful  lines 
of  suffering  had  been  graven  into  her  forehead ! 

She  lay  in  a  kind  of  stupor,  and  Thyrsis,  exhausted, 
began  to  doze.  He  knew  not  how  long  a  time  had 
passed — it  had  been  an  hour,  perhaps  two,  when  sud- 


274  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

denly  he  opened  his  eyes  and  sat  up  with  a  bound, 
galvanized  into  life  by  a  cry  from  Corydon.  She  had 
started  forward,  grasping  around  her  wildly,  uttering 
a  series  of  rising  screams.  He  clutched  her  hand,  and 
stared  around  the  room  in  fright. 

They  were  alone.  He  leaped  up;  but  the  nurse  ran 
into  the  room  at  the  same  instant.  She  gazed  at  the 
girl,  whose  face  had  flushed  suddenly  purple ;  she  came 
to  her,  and  took  her  hand. 

"You  feel  some  pain?"  she  asked. 

Corydon  could  not  speak,  but  she  nodded ;  a  moment 
later  she  sunk  back  with  a  gasp. 

"A  kind  of  bearing-down  pain?"  said  the  nurse. 
"Different  from  the  other?" 

Corydon  gasped  her  assent  again. 

"That  is  the  birth,"  the  nurse  said.  "The  doctor 
will  be  here  in  a  moment." 

Again  the  horrible  spasm  seized  the  girl,  and  brought 
her  to  a  sitting  posture ;  again  her  hand  clutched  Thyr- 
sis'  with  a  grip  like  death,  and  again  the  veins  on  her 
forehead  leaped  out.  Like  the  surging  of  an  ocean 
billow,  it  seemed  to  sweep  over  her ;  and  then  suddenly 
she  screamed,  and  sank  back  upon  the  pillow. 

Thyrsis  was  wild  with  alarm ;  but  the  doctor  entered, 
placid  as  ever.  "So  they've  come?"  he  said. 

Nothing  seemed  to  disturb  him.  He  was  like  a  being 
out  of  another  region.  He  took  off  his  coat  and  bared 
his  arms ;  he  put  on  a  long  white  apron,  and  washed 
his  hands  elaborately  again,  and  then  once  more  ex 
amined  his  patient.  His  face  was  opposite  to  Thyrsis', 
and  the  latter  watched  his  expression,  breathless  with 
dread.  But  the  doctor  only  said,  "Ah,  yes." 

He  turned  to  Corydon.  "These  pains  that  you  feel," 
he  said,  "are  from  the  compressing  of  the  womb.  Don't 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   276 

let  them  frighten  you — everything  is  just  as  it  should 
be.  You  will  find  that  you  can  help  at  each  pang  by 
holding  your  breath;  just  as  soon  as  you  cry  out, 
it  releases  the  diaphragm,  and  the  pressure  stops,  and 
the  pain  passes.  You  must  bear  each  one  just  as  long 
as  you  can.  I  don't  want  you  to  faint,  of  course — but 
the  longer  the  pressure  lasts,  the  sooner  it  will  all  be 
over." 

The  girl  was  staring  at  him  with  her  wild  eyes — she 
looked  like  a  hunted  creature  in  a  trap.  It  sounded  all 
so  very  simple — but  the  horror  of  it  drove  Thyrsis 
mad.  Ah,  God,  it  was  monstrous — it  was  superhuman 
— it  was  a  thing  beyond  all  thinking !  It  wrung  all  his 
soul,  it  shook  him  as  the  tempest  shakes  a  leaf — the 
sight  of  this  awful  agony. 

It  was  like  the  sudden  closing  of  a  battle;  the  shock 
of  squadrons,  the  locking  of  warriors  in  a  grip  of 
death.  There  was  no  longer  time  for  words  now,  no 
longer  time  for  a  glance  about  him;  the  spasms  came, 
one  after  another,  relentless,  unceasing,  inevitable — 
each  trooping  upon  the  heels  of  the  last ;  they  were 
uncounted — uncountable — piling  upon  one  another  like 
waves  upon  the  sea,  like  the  gusts  of  a  raging  storm. 
And  this  girl,  this  child,  that  he  had  watched  over  so 
hungrily,  that  was  so  tender  and  so  sensitive — it  was 
like  wild  horses  tearing  her  apart!  The  agony  would 
flame  up  in  her,  he  would  see  her  body  turn  rigid,  her 
face  flush  scarlet,  her  teeth  become  set  and  her  gums 
fleshed.  The  muscles  would  stand  out  in  her  cheeks, 
the  perspiration  start  upon  her  forehead.  She  would 
grip  Thyrsis'  hand  until  all  the  might  of  both  his 
arms  was  not  enough  to  match  her. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  bed  knelt  the  young  nurse, 
wrestling  with  the  other  hand;  and  Thyrsis  could  see 


276  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

her  face  flush  too,  each  time — until  at  last  a  cry  would 
seem  to  tear  its  way  from  the  girl's  throat,  and  she 
would  sink  back,  faint  and  white. 

It  was  a  new  aspect  of  life  to  Thyrsis,  a  new  revela 
tion  of  being ;  it  was  pain  such  as  he  had  never  dreamed, 
it  was  horror  the  like  of  which  was  unknown  in  his 
philosophy.  All  the  suffering  of  the  night  was  nothing 
to  a  minute  of  this ;  it  came  upon  her  with  the  rush  of 
a  flood  of  waters — it  seized  her — instant,  insistent,  re 
lentless  as  the  sweep  of  the  planets.  Thyrsis  had  been 
all  unprepared  for  it;  he  cried  out  for  time  to  think — 
to  realize  it.  But  there  was  no  time  to  think  or  to 
realize  it.  The  thing  was  here — now !  It  glared  into 
his  eyes  like  a  fiend  of  hell ;  it  was  fiery,  sharp  as  steel 
— and  it  had  to  be  seized  with  the  naked  hands ! 

The  pangs  came,  each  one  worse  than  the  last.  They 
built  themselves  up  in  his  soul  in  a  symphony  of  terror ; 
the}'  lifted  him  out  of  himself,  they  swept  him  away  be 
yond  all  control,  like  a  ieaf  in  the  autumn  wind.  He 
had  never  known  such  a  sensation  before — his  soul 
seemed  whirled  into  pieces.  His  feeling  was  apart  from 
his  action  ;  he  could  not  control  his  thoughts ;  he  was 
going  mad !  He  loved  her  so — she  was  so  beautiful ; 
and  to  see  her  thus,  in  the  grip  of  horror ! 

He  tried  to  get  hold  of  himself  again — he  talked  to 
himself,  pinning  his  attention  on  the  task  of  his  hands. 
Perhaps  maybe  it  was  his  fancy — it  did  not  really  hurt 
her  so  !  Maybe 

He  spoke  to  her,  calling  to  her,  in  between  the 
crises.  She  turned  her  eyes  upon  him,  looking  unutter 
able  agony ;  she  could  not  speak.  And  then  again  came 
the  spasm,  and  she  reared  herself  to  meet  it.  She 
seemed  to  loom  before  his  eyes  ;  she  was  no  longer  human, 
but  in  her  agony  transfigured.  She  was  the  suffering 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   277 

of  being,  made  flesh;  a  figure  epic,  colossal,  worthy 
of  an  Angelo ;  the  mighty  mother  herself,  the  earth- 
mother,  from  whose  womb  have  come  the  races ! 

And  then — "Perhaps  she  would  be  more  comfortable 
with  another  pillow,"  said  the  doctor,  and  the  spell  was 
broken. 

Corydon  shook  her  head  with  swift  impatience.  This 
was  her  conflict,  the  gesture  seemed  to  say.  They  had 
only  to  let  her  alone — she  had  no  words  to  spare  for 
them. 

"How  long  does  this  last?"  Thyrsis  asked,  his  voice 
trembling.  The  doctor  made  a  motion  to  him  to  be 
silent — evidently  he  did  not  wish  Corydon  to  hear  the 
answer  to  that  question. 

§  9.  FOR  the  girl's  soul  was  rising  within  her ;  per 
haps  from  the  deeps  of  things  there  came  comfort  to 
her,  from  the  everlasting,  universal  motherhood  of  life. 
Nature  must  have  told  her  that  this  at  least  was  pain 
to  some  purpose ;  something  was  being  accomplished. 
And  she  shut  her  jaws  together  again,  and  closed  with 
it — driving,  driving,  with  all  the  power  of  her  being. 
A  feeling  of  awe  stole  over  Thyrsis  as  he  watched  her 
— a  feeling  the  like  of  which  he  had  never  known  in 
his  life  before.  She  was  a  creature  consecrated,  made 
holy  by  suffering ;  she  wras  the  sacredness  of  life  in 
carnate,  a  thing  godlike,  beyond  earth.  It  came  as  a 
revelation,  changing  the  whole  aspect  of  life  to  him. 
It  was  hard  to  realize — that  woman,  woman  who  en 
dured  this,  was  the  same  being  that  he  had  met  in  the 
world  all  his  life — laughing  and  talking,  careless  and 
commonplace.  This — this  was  woman's  fate!  It  was 
the  thing  for  which  woman  was  made,  and  the  lowest, 
meanest  of  them  might  have  to  bear  it !  He  swore  vows 


278  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  reverence  and  knighthood ;  he  fell  upon  his  knees 
before  her,  weeping,  his  soul  white-hot  with  awe.  Ah, 
what  should  he  do  that  he  might  be  worthy  to  live  upon 
the  earth  with  a  woman? 

And  this  was  no  mere  fine  emotion ;  there  was  no 
room  for  imagination  in  it — the  reality  exceeded  all 
imagination.  Overwhelming  it  was,  furious,  relentless ; 
his  thoughts  strove  to  roam,  but  it  seized  him  by  the 
hair  and  dragged  him  back.  Here — here! 

She  was  wrung  and  shaken  with  her  agony,  her  eyes 
shut,  her  face  uplifted,  her  muscles  turned  to  stone. 
And  the  minutes  dragged  out  into  hours — there  was  no 
end  to  it — there  was  no  end  to  it !  There  was  no  mean 
ing — it  was  only  naked,  staring  terror.  It  beat  him 
up  again  and  again ;  he  would  sink  back  exhausted, 
thinking  that  he  could  feel  no  more;  but  it  dragged 
him  up  once  more — to  agony  without  respite!  The 
caverns  of  horror  were  rent  open;  they  split  before 
his  eyes — deeper,  deeper — in  vistas  and  abysses  from 
which  he  shrunk  appalled.  Here  dwelt  the  furies, 
despair  and  madness — here  dwelt  the  demon-forces  of 
being,  grisly  phantoms  which  come  not  into  the  light 
of  day.  Their  hands  were  upon  him,  their  claws  were 
in  his  flesh ;  and  over  their  chasms  he  shuddered — he 
scented  the  smoke  of  that  seething  pit  of  life,  whose 
top  the  centuries  have  sealed,  and  into  which  no  mortal 
thing  may  gaze  and  live. 

Life— life— here  was  life,  he  felt.  What  had  he 
known  of  it  before  this? — the  rest  was  pageantry 
and  sham.  Beauty,  pleasure,  love — here  they  were  in 
the  making  of  them — here  they  were  in  the  real  truth 
of  them !  Raw,  naked,  hideous  it  was ;  and  it  was  the 
source  of  all  things  else!  His  being  rose  in  one  titan 
throb  of  rebellion.  It  was  monstrous — it  was  unthink- 


THE    CAPTURE    IS    COMPLETED        279 

able!  He  wanted  no  such  life — he  had  no  right  to  it! 
Let  there  be  an  end  of  it !  No  life  that  ever  was  could 
be  worth  such  a  price  as  this !  It  was  a  cheat,  a  horror 
— there  could  be  no  justice  in  such  a  thing!  There 
could  be  no  God  in  it — it  was  oppression,  it  was  wrong ! 
He  thought  of  the  millions  that  swarmed  on  the  earth 
—they  had  all  come  from  this !  And  it  was  happening 
every  hour — every  second!  He  saw  it,  the  whole  of  it 
—the  age-long  agony,  the  universal  birth-pang  of  be 
ing.  And  he  hated  it,  hated  it  with  a  wild,  raging 
hatred — he  would  have  annihilated  it  with  one  sweep 
of  his  arm. 

And  yet — there  was  no  way  to  annihilate  it !  It  was 
here — it  was  inevitable.  And  it  was  everlasting — it 
was  an  everlasting  delusion,  an  everlasting  madness. 
It  was  a  Snare! 

Yes,  he  came  back  to  the  thought — that  was  the 
image  for  it!  It  mattered  not  how  much  you  might 
cry  out,  you  were  in  it,  and  it  held  you!  It  held  you 
as  it  held  Corydon,  in  throb  after  throb  of  torment. 
She  moaned,  she  choked,  she  tossed  from  side  to  side; 
but  it  held  her.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  storm  of 
her  agony  beat  upon  her  like  the  tempest  upon  a  moun 
tain  pine-tree. 

§  10.  THE  doctor's  hands  were  red  with  blood  now, 
like  a  butcher's.  He  bent  over  his  work,  his  lips  set. 
Now  and  then  he  would  speak  to  the  young  nurse,  whom 
he  was  teaching;  and  his  words  would  break  the  spell 
of  Thyrsis'  nightmare. 

"You  can  see  the  head  now,"  he  said  once,  turning  to 
the  boy. 

And  Thyrsis  looked;  through  the  horrible  gaping 
wound  showed  a  little  patch,  the  size  of  a  dollar — 


280  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

purplish  black,  palpitating,  starting  forward  when  the 
crises  shook  the  mother.  "And  that  is  a  head!"  he 
whispered,  half  aloud. 

"But  how  can  it  ever  get  out?"  he  cried  suddenly, 
with  wildness. 

"It  will  get  out,"  the  doctor  answered,  smiling. 
"Wait— you  will  see." 

"But  the  baby  will  be  dead !"  he  panted. 

"It  is  very  much  alive,"  replied  the  other.  "I  can 
hear  its  heart  beating  plainly." 

All  the  while  Thyrsis  had  never  really  believed  in 
the  child — it  was  too  strange  an  idea.  He  could  think 
only  of  the  woman,  and  of  her  endless  agony.  Every 
minute  seemed  a  life-time  to  him — the  long  morning 
had  come  and  gone,  and  still  she  lay  in  her  torment. 
He  was  sick  in  body,  and  sick  in  soul ;  she  had  exerted 
the  strength  of  a  dozen  men,  it  seemed  to  him. 

But  now  her  strength  was  failing  her,  he  was  cer 
tain  ;  her  moans  were  becoming  more  frequent,  her  pro 
tests  more  vehement.  The  veins  stood  out  on  the  doc 
tor's  forehead  as  he  worked  with  her — muscular,  like 
a  pugilist.  Gigantic,  he  seemed  to  Thyrsis — terrible 
as  fate.  Time  and  again  the  girl  screamed,  in  sudden 
agony ;  he  would  toil  on,  his  lips  set.  Once  it  was  too 
much  even  for  him — her  cries  had  become  incessant,  and 
he  nodded  to  the  nurse,  who  took  a  bottle  from  the 
table,  and  wetting  a  cloth  with  it,  held  it  to  Corydon's 
face.  Then  she  shouted  aloud,  again  and  again — 
wildly,  and  more  wildly,  laughing  hysterically;  she  be 
gan  flinging  her  arms  about — and  then  calling  to 
Thyrsis,  as  her  eyes  closed,  murmuring  broken  sentences 
of  love,  "babbling  o'  green  fields."  It  was  too  much 
for  the  boy — there  was  a  choking  in  his  throat,  and  he 


THE   CAPTURE   IS   COMPLETED        281 

rushed  from  the  room  and  sank  down  upon  a  chair  in 
the  hall,  crying  like  a  child. 

After  a  while  he  rose  up.  He  paced  the  hall,  talk 
ing  to  himself.  He  could  not  go  on  acting  in  this  way 
— he  must  be  a  man.  Others  had  borne  this — he  would 
bear  it  too;  he  would  get  himself  together.  It  would 
all  be  over  before  long,  and  then  how  he  would  be 
ashamed  of  himself! 

He  went  back.  "It  is  the  chloroform  that  makes  her 
do  that,"  said  the  young  nurse,  soothingly.  "She  is 
out  of  pain  when  she  cries  out  so." 

Corydon  was  coming  back  from  her  stupor ;  the  strife 
began  again.  She  cried  out  for  its  end,  she  could  bear 
no  more.  "Help  me !  Help  me !"  she  moaned. 

The  head  was  the  size  of  a  saucer  now — but  each 
time  that  she  screamed  it  would  go  back.  Thyrsis 
stood  up  to  get  the  strength  to  grip  her  hand;  her 
face  stared  up  into  the  air,  looking  like  the  face  of  a 
wolf.  And  still  there  was  no  end — no  end ! 

There  was  an  hour  more  of  that — the  room  seemed 
to  Thyrsis  to  reel.  Corydon  was  crying,  moaning  that 
she  wished  to  die.  There  was  now  in  sight  a  huge, 
bulging  object — black,  monstrous — rimmed  with  a  band 
of  bleeding,  straining  flesh,  tight  like  the  top  of  a 
drum.  The  doctor  was  bent  over,  toiling,  breathless. 

"No  more!  No  more!"  screamed  the  girl.  "Oh,  my 
God!  my  God!" 

And  the  doctor  answered  her,  panting:  "Once  more! 
once  more!  Now!  now!"  And  so  on,  for  minute  after 
minute;  luring  her  on,  pleading  with  her,  promising 
her,  lying  to  her — "Once  more!  Once  more!  This 
will  be  the  last !"  He  called  to  her,  he  rallied  her ;  he 
signalled  to  Thyrsis  to  help  him — to  inspire  her,  to 
goad  her  to  *iew  endurance. 


282  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  then  another  titan  effort,  and  suddenly — in 
credibly — there  burst  upon  Thyrsis'  sight  an  appari 
tion.  Sick  at  heart,  numb  with  horror,  dazed — he 
scarcely  knew  what  it  was.  It  happened  so  swiftly  that 
he  had  hardly  time  to  see ;  but  something  leaped  forth, 
something  enormous,  supernatural!  It  came — it  came 
—there  seemed  never  to  be  an  end  to  it !  He  started  to 
his  feet,  staring,  crying  out ;  and  at  the  same  moment 
the  doctor  lifted  the  thing  aloft,  with  a  cry  of  exulta 
tion.  He  held  it  dangling  by  one  leg.  Great  God! 
It  was  a  man ! 

A  man !  A  thing  with  the  head  of  a  man,  the  body 
of  a  man,  the  legs  and  arms,  the  face  of  a  man!  A 
thing  hideous — impish — demoniac!  A  thing  purple 
and  dripping  with  blood — ghastly — unthinkable — 
monstrous — a  spectre  of  nightmare  dreams  ! 

And  suddenly  the  doctor  lifted  his  hand  and  smote 
it;  and  the  mouth  of  the  thing  opened,  and  there  came 
forth  a  purplish  froth — and  then  a  cry!  It  was  a 
sound  like  a  tin-pan  beaten — a  sound  that  was  itself 
a  living  presence,  an  apparition;  a  thing  superhuman, 
out  of  another  world — like  the  wailing  of  a  lost  spirit, 
terrifying  to  every  sense!  With  Thyrsis  it  was  like 
the  falling  down  of  towers  within  him — his  whole  be 
ing  collapsed,  and  he  sunk  down  upon  the  bed,  sobbing, 
choking,  convulsed. 

§11.  WHEN  he  looked  up  again  the  elder  nurse 
had  the  baby  in  her  arms ;  and  there  was  a  wan  smile 
on  Corydon's  face. 

The  doctor's  hand  was  in  the  ghastly  wound,  and 
he  was  talking  to  the  young  nurse,  giving  her  instruc 
tion,  in  a  strange,  monotonous  tone.  "The  placenta," 
he  was  saying,  "often  has  to  be  removed,  we  do  it  by 


THE  CAPTURE  IS  COMPLETED   283 

twisting  it  round  and  round — very  gently,  of  course. 
Then  it  comes — so!" 

There  came  a  rush  of  blood,  and  Thyrsis  turned 
away  his  head. 

"Give  me  the  basin,"  said  the  doctor.  "There! — 
And  now  the  next  thing  is  to  see  that  the  uterus  con 
tracts  immediately.  We  assist  it  by  compressing  the 
walls,  thus.  It  must  be  tightly  bandaged." 

Thyrsis  had  turned  to  see  the  child.  He  looked  at 
it,  and  clenched  his  hands  to  control  his  emotions.  Yes, 
it  was  a  man!  it  was  a  man!  Not  a  monster,  not  a 
demon — a  baby! 

His  boy !  himself !  God,  what  a  ghastly  thing  to 
realize!  It  had  his  forehead,  it  had  his  nose!  It  was 
a  caricature  of  himself!  A  caricature  grotesque  and 
impish,  and  yet  one  that  no  human  being  could  mistake 
— a  caricature  by  the  hand  of  a  master ! 

And  it  was  a  living  thing!  It  had  power  of  motion 
— it  twisted  and  writhed,  it  bent  its  arms  and  legs !  It 
winked  its  eyelids,  it  opened  and  shut  its  mouth,  it 
breathed  and  made  sounds !  And  it  had  feeling,  too ! 
It  had  cried  out  when  it  was  struck! 

Gently,  with  one  finger,  he  touched  it;  and  the  con 
tact  with  its  flesh  sent  a  shudder  through  every  nerve 
of  him.  His  child  !  His  child !  And  a  living  child !  A 
creature  that  would  go  on ;  that  would  eat  and  sleep  and 
grow,  that  would  learn  to  make  sounds,  and  to  under 
stand  things !  That  would  come  to  think  and  to  will ! 
That  would  be  a  man! 

"Is  it — is  it  all  right?"  he  asked  the  nurse,  in  a 
trembling  whisper. 

"It's  a  magnificent  boy,"  she  said.  And  then  she 
struck  a  match,  and  held  the  light  in  front  of  its  eyes ; 


£84  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

,and  the  eyes  turned  to  follow  the  light.  "He  sees!" 
she  said. 

Yes,  he  could  see!  And  Thyrsis  had  already  heard 
that  he  could  speak !  What  could  it  not  do — this  mar 
vellous  object!  It  was  Nature's  supreme  miracle — it 
was  the  answer  to  all  the  riddles,  the  solution  of  all  the 
mysteries !  It  was  a  vindication  of  the  subterfuges,  a 
reward  for  the  sacrifices,  a  balm  for  the  pain !  It  was 
the  thing  for  which  all  the  rest  had  been,  it  was  the 
crown  and  consummation  of  their  love — it  was  Life's 
supreme  shout  of  triumph  and  exultation ! 

The  nurse  was  holding  the  child  up  before  Cory- 
don  ;  and  she  was  gazing  at  it,  she  was  feeding  her  eyes 
upon  it.  And  oh,  the  smile  that  came  upon  her  face 
— the  ineffable  smile!  The  pride,  and  the  relief,  an3 
the  beatific  happiness !  This  thing  she  had  done — it 
was  her  act  of  creation!  Her  battle  that  had  been 
fought,  her  victory  that  had  been  won ;  and  now  they 
brought  her  the  crown  and  the  guerdon !  To  Thyrsis 
there  came  suddenly  the  words  of  Jesus:  "A  woman 
when  she  is  in  travail  hath  sorrow,  because  her  hour 
hath  come;  but  as  soon  as  she  is  delivered  of  the  child, 
she  remember eth  no  more  the  anguish,  for  joy  that  a 
man  is  born  into  the  world."  And  he  sunk  down  beside 
the  bed,  and  caught  the  woman's  hand  in  his,  and  began 
to  sob  softly  to  himself. 

§  12.  LATER  on  he  went  into  the  street.  Evening 
was  come  again — for  twenty-two  hours  that  siege  had 
lasted!  And  the  boy  had  eaten  nothing  since  noon  of 
the  day  before,  and  he  was  weak  and  dizzy. 

But  how  strange  the  world  seemed  to  him  all  at 
once!  Peopled  with  phantom  creatures,  that  came  he 
knew  not  whence,  and  went  he  knew  not  whither !  Crea- 


THE   CAPTURE   IS   COMPLETED 

tures  of  awe  and  horror,  who  came  out  of  chaos,  and 
went  back  into  annihilation !  Who  were  flung  here  and 
there  by  cosmic  forces,  played  with  by  tragic  destinies ! 
And  all  of  them  without  any  sense  of  the  perpetual 
marvel  of  their  own  being!  They  ate  and  dressed  and 
slept,  they  laughed  and  played  arid  worked,  they  hated 
and  loved  and  got  and  spent,  with  no  thought  of  the 
wonder  of  their  lightest  breath,  with  no  sense  of  the 
terrors  that  ringed  them  about — the  storms  that  swept 
them  hither  and  thither,  the  million  miracles  that  were 
wrought  for  them  every  instant  of  their  lives ! 

He  went  into  a  restaurant,  and  sat  down ;  and  in  the 
seat  beside  him,  close  at  his  elbow,  was  a  man.  He  was 
a  fat  man — eating  roast  pork,  and  apple-sauce,  and 
mashed  potatoes,  and  bread.  And  Thyrsis  looked  at 
him  with  wondering  eyes.  "Man,"  he  imagined  himself 
saying,  "do  you  know  how  you  came  into  this  world? 
A  thing  impish,  demoniac — purple  and  dripping  with 
blood — a  spectre  of  nightmare  dreams?" 

"W-what?"  the  man  gasped. 

"And  you  know  nothing  of  the  pain  that  it  cost! 
You  have  no  sense  of  the  strangeness  of  it !  You  never 
think  what  your  coming  meant  to  some  woman !" 

And  then — in  the  seat  opposite  was  a  woman ;  and 
Thyrsis  watched  her. 

"You !"  he  thought,  "a  woman !  Can  it  be  that  you 
know  what  you  are?  The  fate  that  you  play  with — 
the  power  that  dwells  in  you !  To  create  new  life,  that 
may  be  handed  down  through  endless  ages !" 

Thyrsis   did  not  say  these  things ;  they  were  what 

'  he  wanted  to  say — what  he  thought  that  he  ought  to 

say.     But  then  he  reminded  himself  that  these  things 

were  forbidden;  these  mighty  facts  of  child-birth,  of 

life-creation — they  might  not  be  spoken  about !     They 


286  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

must  be  kept  hidden,  veiled  with  mystery — if  one  wished 
to  refer  to  them,  he  must  employ  metaphors  and  polite 
evasions. 

And  as  Thyrsis  sat  and  thought  about  this,  he 
clenched  his  hands.  Some  day  the  world  would  hear 
about  it — some  day  the  world  would  think  about  it! 
Some  day  people  would  behold  life — would  realize  what 
it  was  and  what  it  meant.  They  did  not  realize  it  now 
— else  how  could  it  be  that  women,  who  bore  the  race 
with  so  much  pain  and  sorrow,  should  be  drudges  and 
slaves,  or  the  ornaments  and  playthings  of  men?  Else 
how  could  it  be  that  life,  which  cost  such  a  fearful  price, 
should  be  so  cheap  upon  the  earth?  For  every  man 
that  lived  and  walked  alive,  some  woman  had  had  to 
bear  this  agony;  and  yet  men  were  pent  up  in  mines 
and  sweatshops,  they  were  ground  up  in  accidents  in 
factories  and  mills — nay,  worse  than  that,  were  dressed 
up  in  gaudy  uniforms,  and  armed  with  rifles  and  ma 
chine-guns,  and  marched  out  to  slaughter  each  other 
by  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands! 

So,  as  he  walked  the  streets  that  night,  Thyrsis 
made  a  vow.  Some  day  he  would  put  before  the  world 
this  vision  that  had  come  to  him,  some  day  he  would 
blast  men's  souls  with  it.  He  would  shake  them  with 
this  horror,  he  would  thrill  them  with  this  sense  of  the 
infinite  preciousness  and  holiness  of  life !  He  would 
drive  it  into  them  like  a  barbed  arrow — that  never 
afterwards  in  all  their  lives  would  they  be  rid  of. 
Never  afterwards  would  they  dare  to  mock,  never 
afterwards  would  they  be  able  to  rest  until  these  things 
had  been  done  away  with,  until  these  horrors  had  been 
driven  from  the  earth. 


PART    II 

Loves   Captivity 

BOOK  VIII 
THE  CAPTIVE  BOUND 


They  sat  with  the  twilight  shadows  about  them. 
Memories  too  poignant  assailed  them,  and  her  hand 
trembled  as  it  lay  upon  his  arm. 

"How  strange  it  was!"  she  whispered.  "Have  we 
kept  the  faith?" 

"Who  knows?"  he  answered;  and  in  a  low  voice  he 
read — 

"And  long  the  way  appears,  which  seem'd  so  short 
To  the  less  practised  eye  of  sangume  youth; 
And  high  the  mount avn-t ops,  in  cloudy  air, 
The  mountain-tops  where  is  the  throne  of  Truth, 
Tops  in  life's  morning-sun  so  bright  and  bare!" 


§  1.  THIS  was  a  golden  hour  in  Thyrsis'  life.  The 
gates  of  wonder  were  flung  open,  and  all  things  were 
touched  with  a  new  and  mystic  glow.  He  scarcely 
realized  it  at  the  time ;  for  once  he  was  too  much  moved 
to  think  about  his  own  emotions,  the  artist  was  alto 
gether  lost  in  the  man.  Even  the  room  in  which  he 
lodged  was  relieved  of  its  sordidness ;  it  was  a  thing- 
that  men  had  made,  and  so  a  part  of  the  mystery  of 
becoming.  He  yearned  for  some  one  to  whom  he  could 
impart  his  great  emotion ;  but  because  of  the  loneliness 
of  his  life  he  could  find  no  one  but  the  keeper  of  his 
lodging-house.  Even  she  became  a  human  thing  to 
him,  because  of  her  interest  in  the  great  tidings.  If 
all  the  world  loved  a  lover,  it  loved  yet  more  one  through 
whom  the  supreme  purpose  of  love  had  been  accom 
plished. 

Thyrsis  went  each  day  to  the  hospital,  to  watch  the 
new  miracle  unfolding  itself;  to  see  the  Child  asserting: 
its  existence  as  a  being  with  a  life  of  its  own.  He  could 
never  tire  of  watching  it ;  he  watched  it  asleep,  with  the 
faint  heaving  of  its  body,  and  the  soft,  warm  odor 
that  clung  to  it ;  he  watched  its  awakenings — the  open 
ing  of  its  eyes,  and  the  sucking  movements  that  it  made 
perpetually  with  its  lips.  They  had  dressed  it  up  now, 
and  hid  some  of  its  strangeness ;  but  each  morning  the 
nurse  would  undress  it,  and  give  it  a  bath ;  and  then  he- 
marvelled  at  the  short  crooked  legs,  and  the  tiny  red 
hands  that  clutched  incessantly  at  the  air,  and  the 
strange  prehensile  feet,  that  carried  one  back  to  distant 

289 


290  LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

ages,  hinting  at  the  secrets  of  Nature's  workshop. 
Sometimes  they  would  permit  him  to  hold  this  mystic 
creature  in  his  arms — after  much  exhortation,  and  as 
surance  that  his  left  arm  was  properly  placed  at  the 
back  of  its  head.  One  found  out  in  this  way  what  a 
serious  business  life  really  was. 

Corydon  lay  back  among  her  pillows  and  smiled  at 
these  things.  Most  wonderful  it  was  to  him  to  see  how 
swiftly  she  recovered  from  her  ordeal,  how  hourly  the 
flush  of  health  seemed  to  steal  back  into  her  cheeks. 
He  became  ashamed  of  the  memory  of  his  convulsive 
anguish  and  his  blind  rebellions.  He  saw  now  that  her 
pain  had  not  been  as  other  pain ;  it  was  a  constructive 
pain,  a  part  of  the  task  of  her  life.  It  was  a  battle  in 
which  she  had  fought  and  conquered ;  and  now  she  sat, 
throned  in  her  triumphal  chariot,  acclaimed  by  the 
plaudits  of  a  multitude  of  hopes  and  joys  unseen. 

There  came  the  miracle  of  the  milk.  Incessantly  the 
Child's  lips  moved,  and  its  hands  groped  out;  it  was 
an  embodied  demand  for  new  experience — for  life,  it 
knew  not  what.  But  Nature  knew,  and  had  timed  the 
event  to  this  hour.  And  Thyrsis  watched  the  phe 
nomenon,  marvelling — as  one  marvels  at  the  feat  of 
engineers,  who  tunnel  from  opposite  sides  of  a  mountain, 
and  meet  in  the  centre  without  the  error  of  an  inch. 

It  was  in  accordance  with  the  impression  which  Cory 
don  made  upon  him,  as  a  dispenser  of  abundance,  a 
goddess  of  fruitfulness,  that  there  should  have  been 
more  milk  than  the  Child  needed.  The  balance  had  to 
be  drawn  off  with  a  little  vacuum-pump;  and  Thyrsis 
would  watch  the  tiny  jets  as  they  sprayed  upon  the 
glass  bulb.  The  milk  was  rich  and  golden-hued;  he 
tasted  it,  with  mingled  wonder  and  shuddering. 

These  procedures  filled  the  room  with  a  warm,  luscious 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  291 

odor,  as  of  a  dairy ;  they  were  eminently  domestic  pro 
cedures,  such  as  in  fancy  he  had  been  wont  to  tease 
her  about.  But  he  had  few  jests  at  present — he  was 
in  the  inner  chambers  of  the  temple  of  life,  and  hushed 
and  stilled  with  awe.  The  things  that  he  had  witnessed 
in  that  room  were  never  to  be  forgotten ;  each  hour  he 
pledged  himself  anew,  to  the  uttermost  limits  of  his 
life.  The  voice  of  skeptic  reason  was  altogether  silent 
in  him  now.  And  also  he  was  interested  to  observe  that 
all  protest  was  ended  in  Corydon ;  the  impulses  of 
motherhood  had  now  undisputed  sway  in  her. 

§  2.  BUT  even  in  such  an  hour  of  consecration,  the 
sordid  world  outside  would  not  leave  him  unmolested^ 
It  was  as  if  the  black  clouds  had  parted  for  a  moment, 
while  the  sunlight  poured  through ;  and  now  again  they 
rolled  together.  The  great  surgeon,  who  had  told 
Thyrsis  that  he  would  wait  for  his  money,  professed  now 
to  have  forgotten  his  agreement.  Perhaps  he  had 
really  forgotten  it — who  could  tell,  with  the  many  things 
he  had  upon  his  mind?  At  any  rate,  Corydon  found 
herself  suddenly  confronted  with  a  bill,  which  she  was 
powerless  to  pay ;  with  white  cheeks  and  trembling  lips 
she  told  Thyrsis  about  it — and  so  came  more  worry  and 
humiliation.  The  very  food  that  she  ate  became  taste 
less  to  her,  because  she  felt  she  had  no  right  to  it ;  and 
in  a  few  days  she  was  begging  Thyrsis  to  take  her 
away. 

So  he  helped  to  carry  her  downstairs,  and  back  to  her 
parents'  home ;  and  then  he  returned  to  his  own  lonely 
room,  and  sat  for  hours  in  the  bitter  cold,  with  his 
teeth  set  tightly,  and  the  nails  dug  into  the  palms  of 
his  hands.  It  so  happened  that  just  then  the  editor 
was  beginning  to  change  his  mind  about  "The  Hearer 


LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

of  Truth" ;  and  so  he  had  new  agonies  of  anxiety  and 
disappointment. 

Again  he  might  not  come  to  see  Corydon ;  and  this 
led  to  a  great  misfortune.  For  she  could  not  do  with 
out  him  now,  her  craving  for  him  was  an  obsession ;  and 
so  she  left  her  bed  too  soon,  and  climbed  the  stairs  to 
his  room.  Again  and  again  she  did  this,  in  spite  of 
his  protests ;  and  when,  a  little  later,  the  doctors  found 
that  she  had  what  they  called  "womb-trouble",  they 
attributed  it  to  this.  Perhaps  it  was  not  really  so,  but 
Corydon  believed  it,  and  through  all  the  years  she  laid 
upon  it  the  blame  for  innumerable  headaches  and  back 
aches.  Thus  an  episode  that  might  have  been  soon 
forgotten,  stayed  with  her,  as  the  symbol  of  all  the 
agonies  of  which  her  life  was  made. 

She  would  come,  bringing  the  baby  with  her;  and 
they  would  lay  it  upon  the  bed,  and  then  sit  and  talk, 
for  hours  upon  hours,  wrestling  with  their  problems. 
Later  on,  when  Corydon  was  able,  they  would  go  to 
the  park,  craving  the  fresh  air.  But  in  midwinter 
there  were  few  days  when  they  could  sit  upon  a  bench 
for  long;  and  so  they  would  walk  and  walk,  until 
Corydon  was  exhausted,  and  he  would  have  to  help  her 
back  to  the  room. 

Thyrsis  in  these  days  was  like  a  wild  animal  in  a 
cage;  pacing  back  and  forth  and  testing  every  corner 
of  his  prison.  But  they  never  thought  of  giving  up ; 
never  in  all  their  lives  did  that  possibility  come  into  their 
discourse.  And  doggedly,  blindly,  they  kept  on  with 
their  studies.  Corydon  mastered  new  lists  of  German 
words,  and  they  read  Freitag's  "Verlorene  Handscrift" 
together,  and  von  ScheffePs  "Ekkehard",  and  even  at 
tempted  "Iphigcnie  auf  Tauris" — though  in  truth  they 
found  it  difficult  to  detach  themselves  to  quite  that  ex- 


THE    CAPTIVE   BOUND 

tent  from  the  world  of  every-day.  It  is  not  an  easy 
matter  to  experience  the  pure  katharsis  of  tragedy,  with 
a  baby  in  the  room  who  has  to  be  nursed  every  hour 
or  two,  and  who  is  liable  to  awaken  at  any  moment  and 
make  some  demand. 

He  was  such  an  intricate  and  complicated  baby,  with 
so  many  things  to  be  understood — belly-bands  and 
diapers  and  irrational  length  of  skirts.  Sometimes, 
when  Corydon  was  quite  exhausted,  the  attending  to 
these  matters  fell  to  Thyrsis,  who  became  for  the  time 
a  most  domestic  poet.  He  once  sent  an  editorial-room 
into  roars  of  merriment  by  offering  to  review  a  book 
upon  the  feeding  of  infants.  But  he  told  himself  that 
even^  the  hilarious  editors  had  been  infants  once  upon 
a  time ;  and  he  had  divined  that  there  were  secrets  about 
life  to  be  learned,  and  great  art-works  to  be  dreamed, 
even  amid  belly-bands  and  diapers.  Also,  Thyrsis  would 
brave  a  great  deal  of  ridicule  in  order  to  be  paid  a 
dollar  for  the  reading  of  a  book  that  he  really  wanted 
to  read.  For  books  that  one  wanted  to  read  came  so 
seldom;  and  dollars  were  so  difficult  to  earn! 

It  seemed  as  if  the  task  grew  harder  every  week.  He 
went  without  cuffs,  and  wore  old  and  frayed  collars, 
and  washed  his  solitary  necktie  until  it  was  threadbare, 
and  lived  upon  prunes  and  crackers,  and  gave  up  the 
gas-stove  in  his  room — and  still  he  could  scarcely  man 
age  to  get  together  the  weekly  rent.  He  studied  the 
magazines  in  the  libraries,  and  racked  his  wits  for  new- 
ideas  to  interest  their  editors.  He  haunted  editorial- 
rooms  until  his  presence  became  a  burden,  and  he 
brought  new  agonies  and  humiliations  upon  himself.  He 
would  part  from  Corydon  in  the  afternoon,  and  shut 
himself  in  his  room ;  and  sitting  in  bed  to  keep  warm,  he 
would  work  until  midnight  at  some  new  variety  of  pot- 


294  LOVE'S    PILGRIM  4GE 

boiler.  After  which  he  would  go  out  to  walk  and  clear 
his  brain — and  even  then,  exhausted  as  he  was,  his  vision 
would  come  to  him  again,  wonderful  and  soul-shaking. 
So  he  would  walk  on,  and  go  back  to  write  until  nearly 
dawn  at  something  he  really  loved. 

§  3.  IT  was  so  that  he  wrote  his  poem,  "Caradrion". 
It  was  out  of  thoughts  of  Corydon,  and  of  the  tears 
which  they  shed  in  each  other's  presence,  that  this  poem 
was  made.  Thyrsis  had  a  fondness  for  burrowing  into 
strange  old  books,  in  which  one  found  the  primitive 
wonder  of  the  soul  of  man,  first  awakening  to  the  mys 
tery  of  life.  Such  a  book  was  Physiologus,  with  his 
tales  of  strange  beasts  and  magic  jewels.  "There  is  a 
bird  called  Caradrion",  Thyrsis  had  read.  .  .  .  "And 
if  the  sick  man  can  be  healed,  Caradrion  goes  to  him, 
and  touches  him  upon  the  mouth,  and  takes  his  sickness 
from  him ;  and  so  the  man  is  made  well."  And  out  of 
this  hint  he  had  fashioned  the  legend  of  the  two  children 
who  had  grown  up  together  in  "the  little  cot,  fringed 
round  with  tender  green" ;  one  of  them  Cedric,  and  one 
Eileen — for  he  had  given  the  names  that  Corydon  pre 
ferred. 

They  grew  "unto  the  days  of  love",  so  the  story 
ran — 

"And  Cedric  bent  above  her,  stooping  light,, 
To  press  a  kiss  upon  her  tender  cheek. 
And  said,  'Eileen,  I  love  thee;  yea  I  love, 
And  loved  thee  ever,  thou  my  soul's  delight.' 

So  time  sped  on,  until  there  came 

*'To  Cedric  once  a  strange  unlovely  thought, 
That  haunted  him  and  would  not  let  him  be. 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND  295 

'Eileen,'  he  said,  'there  is  a  thing  called  death, 
Of  which  men  speak  with  trembling  at  the  lips ; 
And  I  have  thought  how  it  would  be  with  me 
If  I  should  never  gaze  upon  thee  more.'  ' 

So  Cedric  went  to  find  out  about  these  matters;   he 
sought  a  witch — "the  haggard  woman,  held  in  awe." 

"He  found  her  crouching  by  a  caldron  fire; 
Far  gleams  of  light  fled  through  the  vault  awayy 
And  tongues  of  darkness  flickered  on  the  wall. 
Then  Cedric  said,  CI  seek  the  fate  to  know'. 
And  the  witch  laughed,  and  gazed  on  him  and  sang  sir 

'Fashioned  in  the  shadow-land, 

Out  into  darkness  hurled; 
Trusted  to  the  Storm-wind's  hand, 
By  the  Passion-tempest  whirled! 
Ever  straining, 
Never  gaining, 
Never  keeping, 

Young  or  old! 
Whither  going 
Never  knowing, 
Wherefore   weeping, 

Never  told ! 

Rising,  falling,  disappearing, 
Seeking,  calling,  hating,  fearing; 
Blasted  by  the  lightning  shock, 
Trampled  in  the  earthquake  rock; 
Were  I  man  I  would  not  plead 
In  the  roll  of  fate  to  read !' 


£96  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

**Then  Cedric  shuddered,  but  he  said  again, 
*I  seek  the  fate,'  and  the  witch  waved  her  hand; 
And  straight  a  peal  of  thunder  shook  the  ground, 
And  clanged  and  battered  on  the  cavern  walls, 
Like  some  huge  boulder  leaping  down  the  cliff. 
And  blinding  light  flashed  out,  and  seething  fire 
Shattered  the  seamy  crags  and  heaving  floor." 

And  so  in  a  vision  of  terror  Cedric  saw  the  little  vale, 
and  the  cot  "fringed  round  with  tender  green" ;  and 
upon  the  lawn  he  saw  Eileen,  lying  as  one  dead. 

"And   Cedric   sprang,   and   cried,    'My   love!    Eileen!' 
And  on  the  instant  came  a  thunder-crash 
Like  to  the  sound  of  old  primeval  days, 
Of  mountain-heaving  shock  and  earthquake  roar, 
Of  whirling  planets  shattered  in  the  dark." 

And  so,  half  wild  with  grief  and  despair,  Cedric 
wandered  forth  into  the  world ;  and  after  great  suffer 
ing,  the  birds  took  pity  upon  him,  and  gave  him  ad 
vice — that  he  should  seek  Caradrion. 

w  'Caradrion  ?'  cried  Cedric,  starting  up, 
'Speak  swiftly,  ere  too  late,  where  dwelleth  he?' 
*Ah,  that  I  know  not,'  spake  the  little  voice, 
*Yet  keep  thy  courage,  seek  thou  out  the  stork, 

The  ancient  stork  that  saw  from  earliest  days, 

Sitting  in  primal  contemplation  lost, 

Sphinx-like,  seraphic,  and  oracular, 

Watching  the  strange  procession  of  men's  dreams.' ' 

But  the  stork  was  cruel  and  would  not  heed  him,  and 
led  Cedric  a  weary  chase  through  the  marshes  and  the 
brakes.  But  Cedric  pursued,  and  finally  seized  the  bird 
by  the  throat,  and  forced  the  secret  from  him — 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND 

"  'Fare  southward  still, 

Fronting  the  sun's  midnoon,  all-piercing  shaft, 
Unto  the  land  where  daylight  burns  as  fire; 
Where  the  rank  earth  in  choking  vapor  steams, 
And  fierce  luxurious  vegetation  reeks. 
So  shalt  thou  come  upon  a  seamed  rock, 
Towering  to  meet  the  sun's  fierce-flashing  might, 
Baring  its  granite  forehead  to  the  sky. 
There  on  its  summit,  in  a  cavern  deep, 
Dwells  what  thou  seekest,  half  a  bird,  half  man, 
Caradrion,  the  consecrate  to  pain.'  ' 

Then  came  the  long  journey  and  the  search  for  the 
seamed  rock. 

"  'Twas  night ;  and  vapors,  curling,  choked  the  ground, 
And  the  rock  writhed  like  flesh  of  one  in  pain. 
But  Cedric  mounted  up  to  find  the  cave, 
Crying  aloud :  'I  seek  Caradrion.' 
And  so,  till  from  the  cavern  depth  a  voice: 

'Come  not,  except  to  sorrow  thou  be  born.' 
And  Cedric,  panting,  stretched  his   shrunken  arms: 

'Another's  sorrow  would  I  change  to  joy, 
And  mine  own  joy  to  sorrow;  help  thou  me.' 
To  which  the  voice,  sunk  low,  replied:  'Come  thou.' 
And  Cedric  came,  unfearing,  in  the  dark, 
And  saw  in  gloomy  night  a  form  in  pain, 
With  wings   stretched  wide,  and  beating  faint  and 
fast. 

'Art  thou  Caradrion?'  he  murmured  swift, 
And  echo  gave  reply,  'Caradrion'." 

So  Cedric  told  of  his  errand,  and  pleaded  for  help; 
and  he  heard  the  answer  of  the  voice: 


298  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"  'Yea,  I  can  save  her,  if  thou  be  a  soul 

That  can  dare  pain  and  face  the  rage  of  fate ; 
A  soul  that  feareth  not  to  look  on  death.5 

'Speak  on,'  said  Cedric,  shaking,  and  he  spoke : 

'This  is  my  law,  that  am  Caradrion, 
Whose  way  is  sorrow  and  whose  end  is  death; 
That  by  my  pain  some  fleeting  grace  I  win, 
Some  joy  unto  another  I  can  give. 
Far  through  this  world  of  woe  I  seek,  and  find 
Some  soul  crushed  utterly,  and  steeped  in  pain ; 
And  when  it  sleeps,  I  stoop  on  silent  wing, 
And  with  a  kiss  take  all  its  woe  away — 
Take  it  for  mine,  and  then  into  this  cave 
Return  alone,  the  blessing's  price  to  pay.5 
Then  up  sprang  Cedric.    'Nay,'  he  cried,  'then  swift, 
Ere  life  be  gone !'    But  once  more  spake  the  voice : 

'Nay,  boy,  my  race  is  run,  my  power  is  spent; 
This  hope  alone  I  give  thee,  as  thou  wilt; 
Whoso  stands  by  and  sees  my  heart-throb  cease, 
Who  tastes  its  blood,  my  power  and  form  are  his, 
And  forth  he  fares  in  solitary  flight, 
Caradrion,  the  consecrate  to  pain. 
And  so  my  word  is  said ;  now  hide  thee  far 
In  the  cave's  night,  and  wrestle  there  in  prayer.' 
But  Cedric  said,  'My  prayer  is  done ;  I  wait.' 
So  in  the  cave  the  hours  of  night  sped  by, 
And  sounds  came  forth  as  when  a  woman  fights 
In  savage  pain  a  life  from  hers  to  free." 

Then  in  the  dawn  a  dark  shadow  flew  from  the  cave, 
and  sped  across  the  blue,  and  came  to  the  little  vale, 
where  Eileen  lay  dying,  as  he  had  seen  her  in  the  vision 
in  the  "haggard  woman's"  cavern. 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  299 

"Then   Cedric   sprang,   and   cried,   'My   love !   Eileen !' 

And  Eileen  heard  him  not ;  nor  knew  he  wept. — 

For  mighty  sorrow  burst  from  out  his  heart, 

And  flooded  all  his  being,  and  he  sunk, 

And  moaned :   'Eileen,  I  love  thee  !     Yea,  I  love, 

And  loved  thee  ever ;  and  I  can  not  think 

That  I  shall  never  gaze  upon  thee  more. 

My  life  for  thine — ah,  that  were  naught  to  give, 

Meant  not  the  gift  to  see  thee  nevermore ! 

Never  to  hear  thy  voice.      Nay,  nay,  Eileen, 

Gaze  on  me,  speak  to  me,  give  me  but  one  word, 

And  I  will  go  and  never  more  return.' 

But  Eileen  answered  not;  he  touched  her  hand, 

And  she  felt  nothing.     Then  he  whispered,  low, 

'Oh,  may  God  keep  thee — for  it  must  be  done — 

Guard  thee,  and  bless  thee,  thou  my  soul's  delight! 

And  when  thou  waken'st,  wilt  thou  think  of  me, 

Of  Cedric,  him  that  loved  thee,  oh  so  true? 

Nay,  for  they  said  thou  shouldst  no  sorrow  know, 

And  that  would  be  a  sorrow,  yea,  it  would. 

And  must  thou  then  forget  me,  thou  my  love? 

And  canst  not  give  me  but  one  single  word, 

To  tell  me  that  I  do  not  die  in  vain? 

Gaze  at  me,  Eileen,  see,  thy  love  is  here, 

Here  as  of  old,  above  thee  stooping  light, 

To  press  a  kiss  upon  thy  tender  lips. — 

Ah,  I  can  kiss  thee — kiss  thee,  my  Eileen, 

Kiss  as  of  yore,  with  all  my  passion's  woe!' 

And  as  he  spoke  he  pressed  her  to  his  heart, 

Long,  long,  with  yearning,  and  he  felt  the  leap 

Of  molten  metal  through  his  throbbing  veins ; 

His  eyes  shot  fire,  and  anguish  racked  his  limbs, 

And  he  fell  back,  and  reeled,  and  clutched  his  brow. 

An  instant  only  gazed  he  on  her  face, 


300  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  saw  new  life  within  her  gray  cheek  leap, 

And  her  dark  eyelids  tremble.     Then  with  moan, 

And  fearful  struggle,  swift  he  fled  away, 

That  she  might  nothing  of  his  strife  perceive. 

And  then,  reminded  of  his  gift  of  flight, 

He  started  from  the  earth,  and  beat  aloft, 

Each  sweep  of  his  great  wings  a  torture-stroke 

Upon  his  fainting  heart.     And  thus  away, 

With  languid  flight  he  moved,  and  Eileen,  raised 

In  new-born  joy  from  off  her  couch  of  pain, 

Saw  a  strange  bird  into  the  distance  fade." 

And  so  Cedric  went  back  to  the  seamed  rock,  and 
there  he  heard  a  voice  calling,  "I  seek  Caradrion !"  And 
as  before  he  answered, 

"Come  not,  except  to  sorrow  thou  be  born!" 
And  again,  in  the  cave — 

"The  hours  of  night  sped  by. 
And  sounds  came  forth  as  when  a  woman  fights 
In  savage  pain,  a  life  from  hers  to  free. 

But  Eileen  dwelt  within  the  happy  vale, 
Thinking  no  thought  of  him  that  went  away." 


§  4.  THIS  had  come  so  very  easily  to  Thyrsis  that 
he  could  not  believe  that  it  was  good.  "Just  a  little 
story,"  he  said  to  Corydon,  when  he  read  it  to  her, 
and  he  was  surprised  to  see  how  it  affected  her — how 
the  tears  welled  into  her  eyes,  and  she  clung  to  him, 
sobbing.  It  meant  more  to  her  than  any  other  thing 


^  THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  301 

that  he  had  written ;  it  was  the  very  voice  of  their 
tenderness  and  their  grief. 

Then  Thyrsis  took  it  to  the  one  editor  he  knew  who 
was  a  lover  of  poetry,  and  was  surprised  again,  at 
this  man's  delight.  But  he  smiled  sadly  as  he  realized 
that  the  editor  did  not  use  poetry — they  did  not  praise 
so  recklessly  when  it  was  a  question  of  something  to  be 
purchased ! 

"The  poem  is  too  long  for  any  magazine,"  was  the 
verdict,  "and  it's  not  long  enough  for  a  book.  And 
besides,  poetry  doesn't  sell."  But  none  the  less  Thyrsis, 
who  would  never  take  a  defeat,  began  to  offer  it  about ; 
and  so  "Caradrion"  was  added  to  the  list  of  stamp-con 
suming  manuscripts,  and  set  out  to  see  the  world  at 
the  expense  of  its  creator's  stomach. 

So  there  was  one  more  wrasted  vision,  one  more  futile 
effort — and  one  more  grapple  with  despair,  in  the  hours 
when  he  and  his  wife  sat  wrapped  in  a  blanket  in  the 
tenement-room.  Corydon  was  growing  more  nervous 
and  unhappy  every  day,  it  seemed  to  him.  There  were, 
apparently,  endless  humiliations  to  be  experienced  by 
a  woman  "whose  husband  did  not  support  her".  Some 
zealous  relative  had  suggested  to  her  the  idea  that  the 
"hall-boys"  might  think  she  was  not  really  married; 
and  so  now  she  was  impelled  to  speculate  upon  the 
psychology  of  these  Ethiopian  functionaries,  and  look 
for  slights  and  disapproval  from  them ! 

Thyrsis,  from  much  work  and  little  sleep,  was  hag 
gard  and  wild  of  aspect;  the  cry  of  the  world,  "Take 
a  position!"  rang  in  his  ears  day  and  night.  The 
springs  of  book-reviews  had  dried  up  entirely,  and  by 
sheer  starvation  he  was  forced  to  a  stage  lower  yet. 
A  former  college  friend  was  editing  a  work  of  "con 
temporary  biography",  and  offered  Thyrsis  some  hack- 


302  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

writing.  L£  meant  the  carrying  home  of  huge  bundles 
of  correspondence  from  the  world's  most  brightly-shin 
ing  lights,  and  the  making  up  of  biographical  sketches 
from  their  eulogies  of  themselves.  With  every  light 
there  came  a  portrait,  showing  what  manner  of  light 
it  was.  As  for  Thyrsis,  he  did  his  writing  with  the 
feeling  that  he  would  like  to  explore  with  a  poniard 
the  interiors  of  each  one  of  these  people. 

For  nearly  three  months  now  an  eminent  editor  had 
been  trying  to  summon  up  the  courage  to  accept  "The 
Hearer  of  Truth".  He  had  written  several  letters  to 
tell  the  author  how  good  a  work  it  was;  and  now  that 
it  was  to  be  definitely  rejected,  he  soothed  his  conscience 
by  inviting  the  author  to  lunch.  The  function  came 
off  at  one  of  the  most  august  and  stately  of  the  city's 
clubs,  a  marble  building  near  Fifth  Avenue,  where 
Thyrsis,  with  a  new  clean  collar,  and  his  worn  shoes 
newly  shined,  passed  under  the  suspicious  eyes  of  the 
liveried  menials,  and  was  ushered  before  the  eminent 
editor.  About  the  vast  room  were  portraits  of  by 
gone  dignitaries ;  and  there  were  great  leather-uphols 
tered  arm-chairs  in  which  one  might  see  the  dignitaries 
of  the  present — some  of  them  with  little  tables  at  their 
sides,  and  decanters  and  soda  and  cracked  ice.  They 
went  into  the  dining-room,  where  everyone  spoke  and 
ate  in  whispers,  and  the  waiters  flitted  about  like  black 
and  white  ghosts ;  and  while  Thyrsis  consumed  a  cupful 
of  cold  bouillon,  and  a  squab  en  casserole,  and  a  plate 
of  what  might  be  described  as  an  honorific  salad,  he 
listened  to  the  soft-voiced  editor  discussing  the  prob 
lem  of  his  future  career. 

The  editor's  theme  was  what  the  public  wanted.  The 
world  had  existed  for  a  long  time,  it  seemed,  and  was 
not  easily  to  be  changed ;  it  was  necessary  for  an  author 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  303 

to  take  its  prejudices  into  consideration — especially  if 
he  was  young,  and  unknown,  and — er — dependent  upon 
his  own  resources.  It  seemed  to  Thyrsis,  as  he  listened, 
that  the  great  man  must  have  arranged  this  luncheon 
as  a  stage-setting  for  his  remarks — planning  it  on  pur 
pose  to  light  a  blaze  of  bitterness  in  the  soul  of  the 
hungry  poet.  "Look  at  me,"  he  seemed  to  say — "this 
is  the  way  the  job  is  done.  Once  I  was  poor  and  un 
known  like  you — actually,  though  you  might  not  credit 
it,  a  raw  boy  from  the  country.  But  I  had  taste  and 
talent,  and  I  was  judicious ;  and  so  now  for  thirty  years 
I  have  been  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  country's  leading 
magazines.  And  see — by  my  mere  word  I  am  able  to 
bring  you  here  into  the  very  citadel  of  power !  For 
these  men  about  you  are  the  masters  of  the  metropolis. 
There  is  a  rich  publisher — his  name  is  a  household  word 
— and  you  saw  how  he  touched  me  on  the  shoulder. 
There  is  an  ex-mayor  of  the  city — you  saw  how  he 
nodded  to  me !  Yonder  is  the  head  of  one  of  the  oldest 
and  most  exclusive  of  the  city's  landed  families — even 
with  him  I  am  acquainted!  And  this  is  power!  You 
may  know  it  by  all  these  signs  of  mahogany  furniture, 
and  leather  upholstery,  and  waiters  of  reverential  de 
portment.  You  may  know  it  by  the  signs  of  respecta 
bility  and  awesomeness  and  chaste  abundance.  Make 
haste  to  pay  homage  to  it,  and  enroll  yourself  in  its 
service !" 

Thyrsis  held  himself  in,  and  parted  from  the  editor 
with  all  courtesy;  but  then,  as  he  walked  down  Fifth 
Avenue,  his  fury  burst  into  flame.  Here,  too,  was 
power — here,  too,  the  signs  of  it !  Palaces  of  granite 
and  marble,  and  towering  apartment-hotels ;  an  endless 
vista  of  carriages  and  automobiles,  with  rich  women 
lolling  in  them,  or  descending  into  shops  whose  windows 


804  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

blazed  with  jewels  and  silver  and  gold.  Here  were  the 
masters  of  the  metropolis,  the  masters  of  life ;  the  dis 
pensers  of  patronage — that  "public"  which  he  had  to 
please.  He  would  bring  his  vision  and  lay  it  at  their 
feet,  and  they  would  give  him  or  deny  him  opportunity ! 
And  what  was  it  that  they  wanted?  Was  it  worship 
and  consecration  and  love?  One  could  read  the  answer 
in  their  purse-proud  glances :  in  the  barriers  of  steel 
and  bronze  with  which  they  protected  the  gates  of  their 
palaces;  in  the  aspects  of  their  flunkeys,  whose  casual 
glances  were  like  blows  in  the  face.  One  could  read 
the  answer  in  the  pitiful  features  of  the  little  errand- 
girl  who  went  past,  carrying  some  bit  of  their  splendor 
to  them :  or  of  the  ragged  beggar,  who  hovered  in  the 
shelter  of  a  side-street,  fearing  their  displeasure.  No, 
they  were  not  lovers  of  life,  and  protectors  ;  they  were 
parasites  and  destroyers,  devourers  of  the  hopes  of 
humanity !  Their  splendors  were  the  distilled  essence 
of  the  tears  and  agonies  of  millions  of  defeated  people 
— their  jewels  were  drops  of  blood  from  the  heart  of 
the  human  race ! 

§  5.  So,  with  rage  and  bitterness,  Thyrsis  was  gnaw 
ing  out  his  soul  in  the  night-time ;  distilling  those  fierce 
poisons  which  he  was  to  pour  into  the  next  of  his  work* 
—the  most  terrible  of  them  all,  and  the  one  which  the 
vorld  would  never  forgive  him. 

There  came  another  episode,  to  bring  matters  to  a 
crisis.  In  the  far  Northwest  lived  another  branch  of 
Thyrsis'  family,  the  head  of  which  had  become  what 
the  papers  called  a  Clumber-king".  One  of  this  great 
man's  radiant  daughters  was  to  be  married,  and  the 
family  made  the  selecting  of  her  trousseau  the  occa 
sion  for  a  flying  visit  to  the  metropolis.  So  there  were 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND  305 

family  reunions,  and  Thyrsis  was  invited  to  bring  his 
wife  and  call. 

Corydon  voiced  her  perplexity. 

"What  do  they  want  to  see  us  for?"  she  asked. 

"I  belong  to  their  line,"  he  said. 

"But — you  are  poor !"  she  exclaimed. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "but  the  family's  the  family,  and 
they  are  too  proud  to  be  snobbish." 

"But — why  do  they  ask  me?" 

Thyrsis  pondered.  "They  know  we  have  published 
a  book,"  he  said.  "It  must  be  their  tribute  to  litera 
ture." 

"Are  they  people  of  culture?"  she  asked. 

"Not  unless  they've  tried  very  hard,"  he  answered. 
"But  they  have  old  traditions — and  they  want  to  be 
aristocratic." 

"I  won't  go,"  said  Corydon.    "I  couldn't  stand  them." 

And  so  Thyrsis  went  alone — to  that  same  temple  of 
luxury  where  he  had  called  upon  the  college-professor. 
And  there  he  met  the  lumber-king,  who  was  tall  and 
imposing  of  aspect ;  and  the  lumber-queen,  who  was 
verging  on  stoutness ;  and  the  three  lumber-princesses, 
who  were  disturbing  creatures  for  a  poet  to  gaze  upon. 
It  seemed  to  Thyrsis  that  he  had  been  dwelling  in  the 
slums  all  his  life — so  sharp  was  the  shock  which  came 
to  him  at  the  meeting  with  these  young  girls.  They 
were  exquisite  beyond  telling :  the  graceful  lines  of  their 
figures,  the  perfect  features,  the  radiant  complexions ; 
the  soft,  filmy  gowns  they  wore,  the  faint,  intoxicating 
perfumes  that  clung  to  them,  the  atmosphere  of  serenity 
which  they  radiated.  There  was  that  in  Thyrsis  which 
thrilled  at  their  presence — he  had  been  born  into  such 
a  world,  and  might  have  had  such  a  woman  for  his  mate. 

But  he  put  such  thoughts  from  him — he  had  made  his 


306  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

choice  long  ago,  and  it  was  not  the  primrose-path. 
Perhaps  he  was  over-sensitive,  acutely  aware  of  him 
self  as  a  strange  creature  with  no  cuffs,  and  with 
hardly  any  soles  to  his  shoes.  And  all  the  time  of  these 
women  was  taken  up  by  the  arrival  of  packages  of 
gowns  and  millinery;  their  conversation  was  of  dia 
monds  and  automobiles,  and  the  forthcoming  honey 
moon  upon  the  Riviera.  So  it  was  hard  for  him  not  to 
feel  bitterness ;  hard  for  him  to  keep  his  thoughts  from 
going  back  to  the  lonely  child-wife  wandering  about  in 
the  park — to  all  her  deprivations,  her  blasted  hopes 
and  dying  glories  of  soul. 

The  family  was  going  to  the  matinee;  as  there  was 
room  in  their  car,  they  asked  Thyrsis  to  go  with  them. 
So  he  watched  the  lumber-king  (who  had  refused  to  lend 
him  money,  but  had  offered  him  a  "position")  draw  out 
a  bank-note  from  a  larg'e  roll,  and  pay  for  a  box  in 
one  of  Broadway's  great  palaces  of  art.  And  now — 
having  been  advised  so  often  to  study  what  the  public 
wanted — now  Thyrsis  had  a  chance  to  recline  at  his 
ease  and  follow  the  advice. 

"The  Princess  of  Prague",  it  was  called;  it  was  a 
"musical  comedy" ;  and  evidently  exactly  what  the  pub 
lic  wanted,  for  the  house  was  crowded  to  the  doors. 
The  leading  comedian  was  said  by  the  papers  to  be  re 
ceiving  a  salary  of  a  thousand  dollars  a  week.  He  held 
the  center  of  the  stage,  clad  in  the  costume  of  a  lieu 
tenant  of  marines,  and  winked  and  grinned,  and  per 
formed  antics,  and  sang  songs  of  no  doubtful  signifi 
cance,  and  emitted  a  fusillade  of  cynical  jests.  He  was 
supposed  to  be  half-drunk,  and  making  love  to  a  run 
away  princess — who  would  at  one  moment  accept  his 
caresses,  and  then  spurn  him  coquettishly,  and  then  exe 
cute  an  unlovely  dance  with  him.  In  between  these  di- 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND  307 

verting  procedures  a  chorus  would  come  on,  a  score  or 
so  of  highly-painted  women,  hopping  and  gliding  about, 
each  time  clad  in  new  costumes  more  cunningly  inde 
cent  than  the  last. 

/From  beginning  to  end  of  this  piece  there  was  not 
a  single  line  of  real  humor,  a  spark  of  human  senti 
ment,  a  gleam  of  intelligence ;  it  was  a  kind  of  delirium 
tremens  of  the  drama.  *  To  Thyrsis  it  seemed  as  if  a 
whole  civilization,  with  all  its  resources  of  science  and 
art — its  music  and  painting  and  costumes,  its  poets 
and  composers,  its  actors,  singers,  orchestra,  and  audi 
ence — had  all  at  once  fallen  victims  to  an  attack  of  St. 
Vitus'  dance.  He  sat  and  listened,  while  the  theatre  full 
of  people  roared  and  howled  its  applause ;  while  the 
family  beside  him — mother  and  father  and  daughters — 
laughed  over  jokes  that  made  him  ashamed  to  turn  and 
look  at  them.  In  the  end  the  realization  of  what  this 
scene  meant — not  only  the  break-down  of  a  civilization, 
but  the  trap  in  which  his  own  spirit  was  caught — made 
him  sick  and  faint  all  over.  He  had  to  ask  to  be  ex 
cused,  and  went  out  and  sat  in  the  lobby  until  the 
"show"  was  done. 

The  family  found  him  there,  and  the  bride-to-be  in 
quired  if  he  "felt  better"  ;  then,  looking  at  his  pale  face, 
an  idea  occurred  to  her,  and  after  a  bit  of  hesitation, 
she  asked  him  if  he  would  not  stay  to  dinner.  In  her 
mind  was  the  conflict  between  pity  for  this  poor  boy, 
and  doubt  as  to  the  fitness  of  his  costume ;  and  Thyrsis, 
having  read  her  mind  in  a  flash,  was  divided  between  his 
humiliation,  and  his  desire  for  some  food.  In  the  end 
the  baser  motive  won ;  he  buried  his  pride,  and  went  to 
dinner.  — And  so,  as  the  fates  had  planned  it,  the 
impulse  to  his  next  book  was  born. 


308  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

§  6.  THEEE  came  another  guest  to  the  meal — the 
rector  of  the  fashionable  church  which  the  family  at 
tended  at  home.  He  was  a  young  man,  renowned  for 
the  charm  of  his  oratory ;  smooth-shaven,  pink-and- 
white-cheeked,  exquisite  in  his  manners,  gracious  and 
insinuating.  His  ideas  and  his  language  and  his  morals 
were  all  as  perfectly  polished  as  his  finger-nails ;  and 
never  before  in  his  life  had  Thyrsis  had  such  a  red  rag 
waved  in  his  face.  But  he  had  come  there  for  the  din 
ner,  and  he  attended  to  that,  and  let  Dr.  Holland  pro 
vide  the  flow  of  soul;  until  at  the  very  end,  when  the 
doctor  was  sipping  his  demi-tasse. 

The  conversation  had  come,  by  some  devious  route, 
to  Vegetarianism ;  and  the  clergyman  was  disapproving 
of  it.  That  made  no  difference  to  Thyrsis,  who  was  not 
a  vegetarian,  and  knew  nothing  about  it;  but  how  he 
hated  the  arguments  the  man  advanced !  For  that  which 
made  the  doctor  an  anti-vegetarian  was  an  attitude  to 
life,  which  had  also  made  him  a  Republican  and  an 
Imperialist,  a  graduate  of  Harvard  and  a  beneficiary 
of  the  Apostolic  Succession.  Because  life  was  a  sur 
vival  of  the  fittest,  and  because  God  had  intended  the 
less  fit  to  take  the  doctor's  word  as  their  sentence  of 
extermination. 

The  duty  of  animals,  as  the  clergyman  set  it  forth 
to  them,  was  to  convert  plant-tissue  into  a  more  con 
centrated  and  perfect  form  of  nutriment.  "The  pro 
tein  of  animal  flesh,"  he  was  saying,  "is  more  nearly 
allied  to  human  tissue;  and  so  it  is  clearly  more  fitted 
for  our  food." 

Here  Thyrsis  entered  the  conversation.  "Doctor 
Holland,"  he  said,  mildly,  "I  should  think  it  would  occur 
to  you  to  follow  your  argument  to  its  conclusion." 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND  309 

The  other  turned  to  look  at  him.  "What  conclu 
sion?"  he  asked. 

"I  should  think  you  would  become  a  cannibal,"  Thyr- 
sis  replied. 

And  then  there  was  silence  at  the  table.  When  Dr. 
Holland  spoke  again  it  was  to  hurry  the  conversation 
elsewhere;  and  from  time  to  time  thereafter  he  would 
steal  a  puzzled  glance  at  Thyrsis. 

But  this  the  boy  did  not  see.  His  thoughts  had 
gone  whirling  on ;  here,  in  this  elegant  dining-room,  the 
throes  of  creation  seized  hold  of  him.  For  this  was  the 
image  he  had  been  seeking,  the  phrase  that  would  em 
brace  it  all  and  express  it  all — the  concentrated  bitter 
ness  of  his  poisoned  life !  Yes,  he  had  them !  He  had 
them,  with  all  their  glory  and  their  power !  They  were 
Cannibals.  Cannibals! 

So,  when  he  set  out  from  the  hotel,  he  did  not  go 
home,  but  walked  instead  for  uncounted  hours  in  the 
park.  And  in  those  hours  he  lived  through  the  whole 
of  his  new  book,  the  unspeakable  book — "The  Higher 
Cannibalism" ! 

In  the  morning  he  told  Corydon  about  it.  She  cried 
in  terror,  "But,  Thyrsis,  nobody  would  publish  it!" 

"Of  course  not,"  said  he. 

"But  then,"  she  asked,  "how  can  you  write  it?" 

"I  shall  write  it,"  he  said,  "if  I  have  to  die  when  I 
get  through".  So  he  shut  himself  up  in  his  room  once 
more. 

§  7.  A  FAMOUS  scientist  began  the  story — reason 
ing  along  the  lines  of  Dr.  Holland's  argument.  The 
grass  took  the  inorganic  matter,  and  made  it  into  food ; 
the  steer  ate  the  grass,  and  carried  it  to  the  next  stage ; 
and  beyond  that  was  one  stage  more.  So  the  scientist 


810  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

began  making  experiments — in  a  quiet  way,  of  course. 
He  reported  the  results  before  a  learned  scientific 
body,  but  his  colleagues  were  so  scandalized  that  the 
matter  was  hushed  up. 

The  seed  had  been  sown,  however,  A  younger  man 
took  up  the  idea,  and  made  researches  in  the  South  Seas 
— substantiating  the  claim  that  those  races  which  took 
to  anthropophagy  had  invariably  supplanted  the  others. 
The  new  investigator  printed  his  findings  in  a  book, 
which  was  circulated  privately ;  and  pretty  soon  he  was 
called  into  consultation  by  the  master-mind  of  the  coun 
try's  finance — the  richest  man  in  the  world.  This  man 
was  old  and  bald  and  feeble;  and  now  suddenly  there 
came  to  him  a  new  lease  of  life — new  health  and  new 
enthusiasm.  It  was  given  out  that  he  had  got  it  by 
wandering  about  bare-footed  in  the  grass,  and  playing 
golf  all  day — an  explanation  which  the  public  accepted 
without  question.  No  one  remarked  the  fact  that  the 
old  man  began  devoting  his  wealth  to  the  establishing 
of  foundling  asylums ;  nor  did  any  one  think  it  sus 
picious  that  the  younger  generation  of  this  multi-mil 
lionaire  should  rise  so  suddenly  to  power  and  fame. 

But  there  began  to  be  strange  rumors  and  suspicions. 
There  were  young  writers,  who  had  developed  a  new 
technique,  and  had  carried  poetic  utterance  to  un 
dreamed  of  heights;  and  in  this  poetry  were  cryptic 
allusions,  hints  of  diabolic  things.  A  Socialist  paper 
printed  the  menu  of  a  banquet  given  by  these  "Neo- 
Nietzscheans",  and  demanded  to  know  what  one  was  to 
understand  by  filet  de  monton  blanc,  and  wherein  lay 
the  subtle  humor  of  pate  de  petit  bete.  And  at  last  the 
storm  broke — a  youth  scarcely  in  his  teens  published 
a  book  of  poems  in  which  the  dread  secret  was  blazoned 
forth  to  the  world  with  mocking  defiance.  There  were 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND  311 

frantic  attempts  to  suppress  this  book,  but  they  failed ; 
and  then  a  prosecuting  officer,  eager  for  notoriety, 
placed  the  youth  upon  trial  for  his  life.  And  so  the 
issue  was  drawn. 

The  public  at  large  awakened  to  a  dazed  realization 
of  the  head-way  which  the  new  idea  had  made.  It  had 
become  a  cult  of  the  ruling-class,  the  esoteric  religion 
of  the  state;  everywhere  its  defenders  sprang  up — it 
seemed  as  if  all  the  intellectual  as  well  as  the  material 
power  of  the  community  was  under  its  spell.  To  opposa 
it  was  not  merely  bad  form — it  was  to  incur  a  stigma 
of  moral  inferiority,  to  be  the  victim  of  a  "slave-ethic". 

With  the  scientific  world,  of  course,  its  victory  was 
speedy;  the  new  doctrine  was  in  line  with  recognized 
evolutionary  teaching.  The  great  names  of  Darwin 
and  Spencer  were  invoked  in  its  support ;  and,  of  course, 
when  it  came  to  economic  science,  there  could  be  no  two 
opinions.  Had  laissez-faire  ever  meant  anything,  if 
laissez-faire  did  not  mean  this? 

At  the  very  outset,  the  country  was  startled  by  the 
publication  of  a  book  by  a  college  professor,  famed 
as  a  leading  sociologist,  in  which  the  case  was  presented 
without  any  attempt  at  sophistication.  It  was  a  fact, 
needing  no  attestation,  that  the  mass  of  mankind  had 
always  lived  in  a  state  of  slavery.  At  the  present  hour, 
under  the  forms  of  democracy,  there  were  a  quarter  of 
a  million  men  killed  every  year  in  industry,  and  half  a 
million  women  living  by  prostitution,  and  two  million 
children  earning  wages,  and  ten  million  people  in  want ; 
and  in  comparison  with  these  things,  how  humane  was 
the  new  cult,  how  honest  and  above-board,  how  clean 
and  economical !  For  the  first  time  there  could  be  of 
fered  to  the  submerged  tenth  a  real  social  function  to 
be  performed.  Once  let  the  new  teaching  be  applied 


312  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

upon  a  world-wide  scale,  and  the  proletariat  might  fol 
low  its  natural  impulse  to  multiply  without  limit ;  there 
would  be  no  more  "race-suicide"  to  trouble  the  souls 
of  eminent  statesmen. 

And  this  at  the  time  when  the  attention  of  the  com 
munity  was  focussed  upon  the  new  cause  celebre! 
When  the  public  prints  were  filled  with  an  acrimonious 
discussion  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  instructions  given 
to  the  jury.  If  anyone  chose  to  will  his  body  to  a  pur 
chaser,  said  the  judge,  and  then  go  and  commit  suicide, 
there  was  no  law  to  prevent  him ;  and,  of  course,  the  sub 
sequent  purposes  of  the  purchaser  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  point  at  issue.  This  was  a  matter  of  taste — 
here  the  learned  justice  rapped  for  order — a  matter  of 
prejudice,  largely,  and  the  question  at  issue  was  one  of 
law.  There  was  no  law  controlling  ,a  man's  dietetic 
idiosyncrasies,  and  it  was  to  be  doubted  if  constitu 
tionally  any  such  law  would  stand — certainly  not  in  a 
federal  court,  unless  it  chanced  to  be  a  matter  of  inter 
state  commerce. 

In  their  bewilderment  and  dismay,  the  people  turned 
to  the  Church.  Surely  the  doctrines  of  Christianity 
would  stand  like  a  barricade  against  this  monstrous 
cult.  But  already  within  the  Church  there  had  been 
rumors  and  disturbances ;  and  now  suddenly  a  bishop 
arose  and  voiced  his  protest  against  this  attempt  "to 
drag  the  Church  into  the  mire  of  political  controversy." 
It  must  be  made  perfectly  clear,  said  the  bishop,  that 
Christianity  was  a  religion,  and  not  a  dietetic  dogma. 
Its  purpose  was  to  save  the  souls  of  men,  and  not  to 
concern  itself  with  their  bodies.  It  had  been  stated 
that  we  should  have  the  poor  always  with  us ;  which 
made  clear  the  futility  of  attempting  to  change  the 
facts  of  Nature.  Also  it  was  certain  that  the  founder 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND 

of  Christianity  had  been  a  meat-eater ;  and  though  there 
might  be  more  than  one  interpretation  placed  upon  his 

command  concerning  little  children 

There  we  might  leave  Thyrsis  with  the  established 
Church.  He  had  it  just  where  he  wanted  it,  and  he 
shook  it  until  its  smoothly-shaven  pink  and  white  cheeks 
turned  purple,  and  the  demi-tasse  went  flying  out  of 
its  beautifully  manicured  fingers !  And  while  he  did  it 
he  laughed  aloud  in  hideous  glee,  and  in  his  soul  was 
a  cry  like  the  hunting-call  of  the  lone  gray  wolf,  that 
he  had  heard  at  midnight  in  his  wilderness  camp.  So 
far  a  journey  had  come  the  little  boy  who  had  been 
dressed  up  in  scarlet  and  purple  robes,  and  had  carried 
the  bishop's  train  at  the  confirmation  service!  And  so 
heavy  a  penalty  did  the  church  pay  for  its  alliance 
with  "good  society" ! 

§  8.  THYRSIS  paid  a  week's  living  expenses  to  have 
this  manuscript  copied;  and  then  he  took  it  about  to 
the  publishers.  First  came  his  friend  Mr.  Ardsley,  who 
had  become  his  chief  adviser.  When  Thyrsis  went  to 
see  him,  Mr.  Ardsley  drew  out  an  envelope  from  his 
desk,  and  took  from  it  the  opinion  of  his  reader. 
"'What  in  the  world  is  the  matter  with  this  boy?'" 
he  read.  "That's  the  opening  sentence." 

And  then  he  fixed  his  eyes  upon  the  boy.  "What  in 
the  world  is  the  matter  ?"  he  asked. 

Thyrsis  sat  silent ;  there  was  no  reply  he  could  make. 
He  was  strongly  tempted  to  say  to  the  man,  "The  mat 
ter  is  that  I  am  not  getting  enough  to  eat !" 

But  already  Thyrsis  himself  had  judged  "The 
Higher  Cannibalism"  and  repudiated  it.  It  was  born  of 
his  pain  and  weakness,  and  it  was  not  the  work  he  had 
come  into  the  world  to  do.  So  at  the  end  he  had  placed 


314  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

a  poem,  which  told  of  a  visit  from  his  muse,  after 
the  fashion  of  Mussel's  "Nuits";  the  muse  had  been 
sad  and  silent,  and  in  the  end  the  poet  had  torn  up  the 
product  of  his  hours  of  despair,  and  had  renewed  his 
faith  with  the  gracious  one. 

Meantime  the  long  winter  months  dragged  by,  and 
still  there  was  no  gleam  of  hope.  For  Corydon  it  was 
even  harder  than  for  her  husband.  He  at  least  was 
expressing  his  feelings,  while  she  could  only  pine  and 
chafe,  without  any  sort  of  vent.  Her  life  was  a  matter 
of  colorless  routine,  in  which  each  day  was  like  the  last, 
except  in  increased  monotony.  She  tried  hard  not  to 
let  him  see  how  she  suffered ;  but  sometimes  the  tears 
would  come.  And  her  unhappiness  was  bad  for  the 
child,  which  in  the  beginning  had  been  robust  and  mag 
nificent,  but  now  was  not  growing  properly.  Thyrsis 
would  have  ridiculed  the  idea  that  nervousness  could 
affect  her  milk;  but  the  time  came  when,  in  later  life, 
he  saw  the  poisons  of  fatigue  and  fear  in  test-tubes,  and 
so  he  understood  why  the  child  had  not  been  able  to 
lift  its  head  until  it  was  a  year  old,  and  had  then 
been  well  on  the  way  to  having  "rickets." 

All  their  life  was  so  different  from  the  way  they  had 
dreamed  it!  The  dream  still  lured  them;  but  its  voice 
grew  fainter  and  more  remote.  How  were  they  to  keep 
it  real  to  themselves,  how  were  they  to  hold  it?  Their 
existence  was  made  up  of  endless  sordidness,  of  dreary 
commonplace,  that  opposed  them  with  its  passive  inertia 
where  it  did  not  actively  attack  them.  "Ah,  Thyrsis !" 
Corydon  would  cry  to  him,  "this  will  kill  us  if  it  lasts 
too  long!" 

For  one  thing,  they  no  longer  heard  any  music  at  all. 
She  was  not  strong  enough  to  practice  the  piano ;  and 
his  violin  was  gone.  Here  in  the  great  city  an  end- 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  315 

less  stream  of  concerts  and  operas  and  recitals  flowed 
past ;  and  here  were  they,  like  starving  children  who 
press  their  faces  against  a  pastry-cook's  window  and 
devour  the  sweets  with  their  eyes.  Thyrsis  kept  up 
with  musical  and  dramatic  progress  by  reading  the  ac 
counts  in  the  papers  and  magazines ;  but  this  was  a 
good  deal  like  slaking  one's  thirst  with  a  mirage.  He 
used  to  wonder  sometimes  if  he  were  to  write  to  these 
great  artists — would  they  invite  him  to  hear  them,  or 
would  they  too  despise  him  ?  He  never  had  the  courage 
to  try. 

Once  in  the  course  of  the  long  winter  some  one 
presented  Corydon  with  two  tickets  to  the  opera,  and 
they  went  together,  in  a  state  of  utter  bliss.  It  was  an 
unusual  experience  for  Thyrsis,  for  their  seats  were 
in  the  orchestra,  and  hitherto  he  had  always  heard  his 
operas  from  the  upper  rows  in  the  fifth  balcony,  where 
the  air  was  hot  and  stifling,  and  the  singers  appeared 
as  a  pair  of  tiny  arms  that  waved,  and  a  head  (fre 
quently  a  bald  head)  that  emitted  a  thin,  far-distant 
voice.  This  had  become  to  him  one  of  the  conventions 
of  the  opera;  and  now  to  discover  the  singers  as  full- 
sized  human  beings,  with  faces  and  legs  and  loud  voices, 
was  very  disturbing  to  his  sense  of  illusion. 

Also,  alas,  they  had  not  been  free  to  select  the  opera. 
It  was  "La  Traviata" ;  and  there  was  not  much  food  for 
their  hungry  souls  in  this  farrago  of  artificiality  and 
sham  sentiment.  They  shut  their  eyes  and  tried  to  en 
joy  the  music,  forgetting  the  gallant  young  men  of 
fashion  and  their  fascinating  mistresses.  But  even  the 
music,  it  seemed,  was  tainted;  or  could  it  be,  Thyrsis 
wondered,  that  he  could  no  longer  lose  himself  in  the 
pure  joy  of  melody?  Many  kinds  of  corruption  he 
had  by  this  time  learned  about ;  the  corruption  of  men, 


316  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  of  women,  and  of  children ;  the  corruption  of  paint 
ing  and  sculpture,  of  poetry  and  the  drama.  But  the 
corruption  of  music  was  something  which  even  yet  he 
could  not  face;  for  music  was  the  very  voice  of  the 
soul — the  well-spring  from  which  life  itself  was  derived. 
Thyrsis  thought,  as  he  and  Corydon  wandered  about 
in  the  foyers  of  this  palatial  opera-house,  was  there 
anywhere  on  earth  a  place  in  which  heaven  and 
hell  came  so  close  together.  A  place  where  the  lust 
and  pride  of  the  flesh  displayed  themselves  in  all  their 
glory ;  and  in  contrast  with  the  purest  ecstasies  the 
human  spirit  had  attained!  He  pointed  out  one  rich 
dowager  who  swept  past  them;  her  breasts  all  but  jost 
ling  out  of  her  corsage  as  she  walked,  her  stomach 
squeezed  into  a  sort  of  armor-plate  of  jewels,  her  cheeks 
powdered  and  painted,  her  head  weighted  with  false  hair 
and  a  tiara  of  diamonds,  her  face  like  a  mask  of  pride 
and  scorn.  And  then,  in  juxtaposition  with  that,  the 
Waldweben  and  the  Feuerzauber,  or  the  grim  and  awful 
tragedy  of  the  Siegfried  funeral-march!  There  were 
people  in  this  opera-house  who  knew  what  such  music 
meant ;  Thyrsis  had  read  it  in  their  faces,  in  that  suffo 
cating  top-gallery.  He  wondered  if  some  day  the  de 
mons  that  were  evoked  by  the  music  might  not  call  to 
them  and  lead  them  in  revolt,  to  drive  the  money 
changers  from  the  temple  once  again ! 

§  9.  ANOTHER  editor  was  reading  "The  Hearer  of 
Truth,"  and  a  publisher  was  hovering  on  the  brink  of 
venturing  "The  Higher  Cannibalism" ;  and  so  the  two 
had  new  hopes  to  lure  them  on.  When  the  spring-time 
had  come,  they  would  once  more  escape  from  the  city, 
and  would  put  up  their  tent  on  the  lake-shore!  They 
spent  long  afternoons  picturing  just  how  they  would 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  317 

live — what  they  would  eat,  and  what  they  would  wear, 
and  what  they  would  study.  As  for  Cedric — so  they 
had  called  the  baby — they  saw  him  playing  beneath  the 
big  tree  in  front  of  the  tent.  And  what  fun  they  would 
have  giving  him  his  bath  on  the  little  beach  inside  the 
point ! 

"I'll  fix  up  a  clothes-basket  for  him  to  sleep  in !"  de 
clared  Thyrsis. 

"Nonsense,  dear!"  said  Corydon.  "I've  told  you 
many  times  before— we'll  have  to  have  a  crib  for  him !" 

"But  why?"  cried  he;  and  there  would  follow  an 
argument  which  gave  pain  to  his  economical  soul. 

Corydon  declared  herself  willing  to  do  her  share  in 
the  matter  of  saving  money ;  but  it  seemed  to  him  that 
whenever  he  suggested  a  concrete  idea,  there  would  be 
objections.  "We  can  get  up  at  dawn,"  he  would  say, 
"and  save  the  cost  of  oil." 

"Yes,"  she  would  answer. 

"And  we  can  do  our  own  laundry,"  he  would  continue. 
But  immediately  another  argument  would  begin ;  it  was 
impossible  to  persuade  Corydon  that  diapers  could  be 
washed  in  cold  water,  even  when  one  had  the  whole  of 
the  Great  Lakes  for  a  washtub. 

They  would  go  on  to  contemplate  the  glorious  time 
when  they  would  have  money  enough  to  build  a  home 
of  their  own,  that  could  be  inhabited  in  winter  as  well 
as  in  summer;  Corydon  always  referred  to  it  with  the 
line  from  "Caradrion" — "the  little  cot,  fringed  round 
with  tender  green."  It  would  be  fine  for  the  baby,  they 
agreed — he  should  never  have  to  go  back  io  the  city 
again.  Thyrsis  had  a  vision  of  him  as  he  would  be  in 
that  home:  a  brown  and  freckled  country  boy,  with 
what  were  known,  in  the  dialect  of  "dam- fool  talk", 
as  "yagged  panties  and  bare  feets". 


318  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

But  Corydon  would  protest  at  that  picture.  "It's 
all  right,"  she  said,  "to  put  up  with  ugliness  if  you 
have  to.  But  what's  the  use  of  making  a  fetish  of  it?" 

"It  wouldn't  be  ugliness,"  replied  he.  "It  would  be 
Nature !  'Blessings  on  thee,  little  man !' ' 

"That's  all  very  well.  But  I  want  Cedric  to  have 
curls » 

"Curls !"  he  cried.  "And  then  a  Fauntleroy  suit,  I 
suppose !" 

"No — at  least  not  while  we're  poor.  But  I  want  him 
to  look  decent " 

"If  you  have  curls,  then  you'll  want  a  nurse-maid  to 
brush  them!" 

"Nonsense,  Thyrsis !  Can't  a  mother  take  care  of 
her  child's  own  hair?" 

"Some  mothers  can — they  have  nothing  better  to  do. 
But  if  you  were  going  in  for  the  hair-dresser's  art,  why 
did  you  cut  off  your  own?" 

And  so  would  come  yet  new  discussions.  "You'll  be 
wanting  me  to  maintain  an  establishment!"  Thyrsis 
would  cry,  whenever  these  aesthetic  impulses  manifested 
themselves.  He  seemed  to  be  haunted  by  that  image  of 
an  establishment.  All  married  men  came  to  it  in  the  end 
— there  seemed  to  be  something  in  matrimony  that  pre 
disposed  to  it ;  and  far  better  adopt  at  once  the  ideals 
and  habits  of  the  gypsies,  than  to  settle  into  respecta 
bility  with  a  nurse-maid  and  a  cook! 

Thyrsis  was  under  the  necessity  of  sweeping  clean 
his  soul,  because  of  all  the  luxury  and  wantonness  he 
saw  in  this  metropolis,  and  the  madness  to  which  it 
goaded  his  soul.  Some  day  fame  would  come  to  him, 
he  knew — wealth  also,,  perhaps ;  and  oh,  there  must  be 
one  man  in  all  the  city  who  was  not  corrupted,  who  did 
not  learn  extravagance  and  self-indulgence,  who  prac- 


THE   CAPTIVE   BOUND 

ticed  as  well  as  preached  the  life  of  faith!  And  so, 
again  and  again,  he  and  Corydon  would  renew  the 
pledges  of  their  courtship-days — pledges  to  a  discipline 
of  Spartan  sternness. 

Poor  as  he  was,  Thyrsis  still  found  time  to  figure 
over  the  things  he  meant  to  do  when  he  got  money :  the 
publishing-house  that  was  to  bring  out  his  books  at 
cost,  and  the  free  reading-rooms  and  the  circulating 
libraries.  Also,  he  wanted  to  edit  a  magazine ;  for  there 
was  a  great  truth  which  he  wished  to  teach  the  world. 
"We  must  make  these  things  that  we  have  suffered  count 
for  something!"  he  would  say  to  Corydon,  again  and 
again.  "We  must  use  them  to  open  people's  eyes !" 
He  was  thinking  how,  when  at  last  he  had  escaped  from 
the  pit,  he  would  be  in  a  position  to  speak  for  those 
others  who  were  left  behind.  Men  would  heed  him  then, 
and  he  could  show  them  how  impossible  it  was  for  the 
creative  artist  to  do  his  work,  and  at  the  same  time 
carry  on  the  struggle  for  bread.  He  would  induce  some 
rich  man  to  set  aside  a  fund  for  the  endowment  of 
young  writers ;  and  so  the  man  who  had  a  real  message 
might  no  longer  have  to  starve. 

Thyrsis  had  by  this  time  tried  all  the  world,  and  he 
knew  that  there  was  no  one  to  understand.  Just  about 
now  he  was  utterly  stranded,  and  had  to  borrow  money 
for  even  his  next  day's  food.  And  oh,  the  humiliations 
and  insults  that  came  with  these  loans !  And  worse  yet, 
the  humiliations  and  insults  that  came  without  any 
loans !  There  was  one  rich  man  who  advanced  him  ten 
dollars;  Thyrsis,  when  he  returned  it,  sent  a  check  he 
had  received  from  some  out-of-town  magazine — and  in 
return  was  rebuked  by  the  rich  man  for  failing  to  in 
clude  the  "exchange"  on  the  check.  Thyrsis  wrote 
humbly  to  inquire  voiat  manner  of  thing  the  "exchange" 


320  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

on  a  check  might  be;  and  learned  that  he  was  still  in 
the  rich  man's  debt  to  the  sum  of  ten  cents ! 

His  case  was  the  more  hopeless,  he  found,  because 
he  was  a  married  man.  The  world  might  have  pardoned 
a  young  free-Jance  who  was  willing  to  "rough  it"  and 
take  his  chances  for  a  while;  but  a  man  who  had  a  wife 
and  child — and  was  still  prating  about  poetry !  To  the 
world  the  possession  of  a  wife  and  child  meant  self- 
indulgence;  and  when  a  man  had  fallen  into  that  trap, 
he  simply  had  to  settle  down  and  take  the  consequence. 
How  could  Thyrsis  explain  that  his  marriage  had  not 
been  as  other  men's?  How  could  he  hint  at  such  a 
thing,  without  proving  himself  a  cad? 

§  10.  THE  work  of  "contemporary  biography"  had 
come  to  an  end;  there  followed  weeks  of  seeking,  and 
then  another  opening  appeared — Mr.  Ardsley  offered 
him  a  chance  to  do  some  manuscript-reading.  This 
was  really  a  splendid  opportunity,  for  the  work  would 
not  be  difficult,  and  the  payment  would  be  five  dollars 
for  each  manuscript.  Thyrsis  accepted  joyfully,  and 
forthwith  carried  off  a  couple  of  embryo  books  to  his 
room. 

It  was  a  new  and  curious  occupation,  which  opened 
up  to  him  whole  worlds  whose  existence  he  had  not 
previously  suspected.  Through  his  review-writing  he 
had  become  acquainted  with  the  books  that  had  seen  the 
light  of  day ;  now  he  made  the  startling  discovery  that 
for  every  one  that  was  born,  there  were  hundreds,  per 
haps  thousands,  that  died  in  the  womb.  He  could  see 
how  it  went — the  hordes  of  half-educated  people  who 
read  books  and  were  moved  to  write  something  like 
them.  Each  manuscript  was  a  separate  tragedy;  and 
often  there  would  be  a  letter  or  n  preface  to  make 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND 

certain  that  one  did  not  miss  thesense  of  it.  Here  would 
be  a  settlement- worker,  burning  with  a  message,  but 
unable  to  draw  a  character  or  to  write  dialogue ;  here 
would  be  a  business-man,  who  had  studied  up  the  dialect 
of  the  region  where  he  spent  his  summer  vacations,  and 
whose  style  was  so  crude  that  one  winced  as  he  turned 
the  pages ;  here  would  be  a  poor  bookkeeper,  or  a  type 
writer,  or  other  cog  in  the  business  machine,  who  had 
read  of  the  fortunes  made  by  writers  of  fiction,  and  had 
spent  all  his  hours  of  leisure  for  a  year  in  composing 
a  tale  of  the  grand  monde,  or  some  feeble  imitation  of 
the  sugar-coated  "historical  romance"  of  the  hour. 

Sometimes  as  he  read  these  manuscripts,  a  shudder 
would  come  over  Thyrsis;  how  they  made  him  realize 
the  odds  in  the  game  of  life!  These  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  panting  and  striving  for  success ; 
and  he  lost  in  the  throng  of  them !  What  madness  it 
seemed  to  imagine  that  he  might  climb  over  their  heads 
— that  he  had  been  chosen  to  scale  the  heights  of 
fame!  Their  letters  and  prefaces  sounded  like  a  satire 
upon  his  own  attitude,  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  his 
claims  to  "genius".  Here,  for  instance,  was  a  man  who 
wrote  to  introduce  himself  as  America's  first  epic  poet 
— stating  incidentally  that  he  was  an  inspector  of 
gas-meters,  and  had  a  wife  and  sit  children.  His  poem 
occupied  some  six  hundred  foolscap  sheets,  finely  bound 
up  by  hand;  it  set  forth  the  soul-states  of  a  Byron 
from  Alabama — an  aristocratic  hero  who  was  refused 
by  the  lady  of  his  heart,  and  voiced  his  anger  and  per 
plexity  in  a  long  speech,  two  lines  of  which  stamped 
themselves  forever  upon  the  mind  of  the  reader 

"But  I!  he  cried.     My  limbs  are  straight, 
My  purse  well-filled,  my  veins  all  F.  F.  V. !" 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

As  a  method  of  earning  one's  living,  this  was  almost 
too  good  to  be  true.  The  worse  the  manuscripts  were, 
the  easier  was  his  task ;  in  fact,  when  he  came  upon  one 
which  showed  traces  of  real  power  and  interest  he 
cursed  his  fate,  for  then  it  might  take  several  days  to 
earn  his  five  dollars.  But  for  the  most  part  the  manu 
scripts  were  bad  enough,  and  he  could  have  earned  a 
year's  income  in  a  week,  if  only  there  had  been  enough 
of  them.  So  he  made  a  great  effort  to  succeed  at  the 
work,  and  filled  his  reports  with  epigrams  and  keen 
observations,  carefully  adapted  to  what  he  knew  was 
Mr.  Ardsley's  point  of  view.  He  allowed  time  for  these 
devices  to  be  effective,  and  then  paid  a  visit  to  find  out 
about  the  prospects. 

"Mr.  Ardsley,"  he  began,  "I  am  going  to  try  to  meet 
you  half  way  with  a  book." 

"AhP  said  the  other. 

"I  want  to  write  a  novel  that  you  can  publish.  I 
believe  that  I  can  do  it." 

Mr.  Ardsley  warmed  immediately.  "I  have  always 
been  certain  that  you  could,"  said  he.  He  went  on  to 
expound  to  Thyrsis  the  ethics  of  opportunism — how 
it  would  not  be  necessary  to  be  false  to  his  convictions, 
to  write  anything  that  he  did  not  believe — but  simply 
to  put  his  convictions  into  a  popular  form,  and  to 
impact  no  more  than  the  public  could  swallow  at  the 
first  mouthful. 

Thyrsis  told  him  the  outline  of  a  plot.  He  would 
write  a  story  of  the  struggles  of  a  young  author  in  the 
metropolis- — not  such  a  young  author  as  himself,  a 
rebel  and  a  frenzied  egotist,  but  a  plain,  everyday 
young  author  whom  other  people  could  care  about.  He 
had  the  "local  color"  for  such  a  tale,  and  he  could  do 


THE   CAPTIVE  BOUND  323 

it  without  too  much  waste*  of  time.  Mr.  Ardsley 
thought  it  an  excellent  idea. 

After  which  Thyrsis  came,  very  cautiously,  to  the 
meat  of  the  matter.  "I  want  to  get  away  into  the 
country  to  write  it,"  he  said;  "and  so  I  wanted  to  ask 
you  about  the  manuscripts  you  are  sending  me.  Have 
you  found  my  work  satisfactory?" 

"Why,  yes,"  said  the  other. 

"And  do  you  think  ^you  can  send  them  through  the 
summer  ?" 

"I  presume  so.  It  depends  upon  how  many  come  to 
us." 

"You — you  couldn't  arrange  to  let  me  have  any  more 
of  them?" 

"Not  at  present,"  said  Mr.  Ardsley.  "You  see,  I 
have  regular  readers,  whose  work  I  know.  I'll  send  you 
what  I  have  to  spare." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Thyrsis.  "I'll  be  glad  to  have 
all  you  can  give  me." 

So  he  went  away;  and  in  the  little  room  he  and 
Corydon  had  an  anxious  consultation.  He  had  been 
getting  about  twenty  dollars  a  month;  which  was  not 
enough  for  the  family  to  exist  upon.  "Our  only  hope 
is  a  new  book,"  he  declared ;  and  Corydon  saw  that  was 
the  truth.  "Each  week  that  I  stay  here  is  a  loss," 
he  added.  "I  have  to  pay  room-rent." 

"But  can  you  stand  tenting  out  in  April?"  asked 
she. 

"I'll  chance  it,"  he  replied — "if  you'll  say  the  word." 

She  saw  that  her  duty  was  before  her ;  she  must 
nerve  herself  and  face  it,  though  it  tore  her  heart 
strings.  She  must  stay  and  take  care  of  the  baby, 
while  he  went  away  to  work! 

He  sat  and  held  her  hands,  arid  saw  her  bite  her  lips 


324  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  fight  to  keep  back  the  tears  in  her  eyes.     Their 
hearts  had  grown  together,  so  that  it  was  like  tearing 
their  flesh  to  separate  them.     They  had  never  imagined 
that  such  a  thing  could  come  into  their  lives. 
"Thyrsis,"  she  whispered — "you'll  forget  me!" 
He   pressed   her   hands    more   tightly.      "No,   dear! 
No  I"  he  said. 

"But  you'll  get  used  to  living  without  me !"  she  cried. 
"And  it's  the  time  in  my  life  when  I  need  you  most !" 
"I  will  stay,  dearest,  if  you  say  so." 
She  exclaimed,  "No,  no !  I  must  stand  it !" 
And  seeing  her  grief,  his  heart  breaking  with  pity, 
a  strange  impulse  came  to  Thyrsis.  He  took  her  hands 
in  his,  and  knelt  down  before  her,  and  began  to  pray. 
It  had  been  years  since  he  had  thought  of  prayer,  and 
Corydon  had  never  thought  of  it  in  her  life.  It  came 
from  the  deeps  of  him — a  few  stammering  words, 
simple,  almost  childish,  yet  exquisite  as  music.  He 
prayed  that  they  might  have  courage  to  keep  up  the 
fight,  that  they  might  be  able  to  hold  their  love  before 
them,  that  nothing  might  ever  dim  their  vision  of  each 
other.  It  was  a  prayer  without  theology  or  meta 
physics — a  prayer  to  the  unknown  gods ;  but  it  set  free 
the  well-spring  of  tenderness  and  pity  within  them ; 
and  when  he  finished  Corydon  was  sobbing  upon  his 
shoulder. 


BOOK  IX 
THE  CAPTIVE  IN  LEASH 


They  were  standing  on  the  Mil-top,  watching  the 
last  glimmer  of  the  sinkmg  moon.  As  the  famt  per 
fume  of  the  clover  came  to  them  upon  the  warm  eve 
ning  wind,  she  sighed,  and  whispered — 

"Too  rare,  too  rare,  grow  now  my  visits  here! 
'Mid  city  noise,  not  as  with  thee  of  yore, 
Thyrsis!  in  reach  of  sheep-bells  is  my  homel 

She  paused. 

"Go  on,"  he  said,  and  she  quoted — 

"Then  through  the  great  town's  harsh,  heart-wearying 

roar, 
Let  in  thy  voice  a  whisper  always  come, 

To  chase  fatigue  and  fear: 
Why  faintest  thou?     I  wandered  till  I  died. 
Roam  on!     The  light  we  sought  is  shinmg 


§  1.  THYRSIS  made  his  plans  and  packed  his  few 
belongings.  There  came  another  pass  from  the  "higher 
regions",  and  he  took  the  night-train  once  more,  and 
came  to  the  little  town  upon  the  shores  of  Lake  On 
tario.  Once  more  the  sun  shone  on  the  crystal-green 
water,  and  the  cold  breeze  blew  from  off  the  lake.  There 
was  still  snow  in  the  ravines  of  the  deep  woods,  but 
Thyrsis  got  his  tent  out  of  the  farmer's  barn,  and 
patched  up  the  holes  the  mice  had  gnawed,  and  put  it 
up  on  the  old  familiar  spot. 

It  was  strange  to  him  to  be  there  without  Corydon. 
There  were  so  many  things  to  rsmind  him  of  her — 
a  sudden  memory  would  catch  him  unawares,  and  stab 
him  like  a  knife.  There  was  the  rocky  headland  where 
they  had  swam,  and  there  was  the  pine-tree  that  the 
lightning  had  splintered,  one  day  while  they  were  stand 
ing  near.  When  darkness  came,  and  he  was  unpacking 
a  few  old  things  that  they  had  left  up  in  the  country, 
his  loneliness  seemed  to  him  almost  more  than  he  could 
bear ;  he  sat  by  the  little  stove,  holding  a  pair  of  her 
old  faded  slippers  in  his  hands,  and  felt  his  tears  trick 
ling  down  upon  them. 

But  it  took  him  only  a  day  or  two  to  drive  such 
things  out  of  his  mind.  There  was  no  time  for  senti 
ment  now — it  was  "Clear  ship  for  action !"  For  once 
in  his  life  he  was  free,  and  had  a  chance  to  work.  He 
was  full  of  his  talk  with  Mr.  Ardsley,  and  meant  to 
do  his  best  to  be  "practical."  And  so  behold  him  wan 
dering  about  in  the  water-soaked  forests,  or  tramping 

327 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  muddy  roads,  or  sitting  by  his  little  stove  while 
the  cold  storms  beat  upon  the  tent — wrestling  with 
his  unruly  Pegasus,  and  dragging  it  back  a  hundred 
times  a  day  to  what  was  proper,  and  human,  and  in 
teresting  ! 

The  neighbors  had  warned  him  that  it  was  too  early 
for  tenting,  but  Thyrsis  had  vowed  he  would  stand  it. 
And  now,  as  if  to  punish  him  for  his  defiance,  there 
was  emptied  out  upon  him  the  cave  of  all  the  winds; 
for  four  weeks  there  were  such  storms  of  rain  and  sleet 
and  snow  as  the  region  had  never  known  in  April. 
There  were  nights  when  he  sat  wrapped  in  overcoats 
and  blankets,  with  a  fire  in  the  stove;  and  still  shiver 
ing  for  the  gale  that  drove  through  the  canvas. 
There  came  one  calm,  starlit  night  when  he  lay  for 
hours  almost  frozen,  and  sat  up  in  the  morning  to  find 
a  glass  of  water  at  his  bedside  frozen  solid.  Thirteen 
degrees  the  thermometer  showed,  according  to  the 
farmer;  and  oh,  the  agony  of  getting  out  of  bed,  and 
starting  a  fire  with  green  wood!  In  the  end  Thyrsis 
poured  in  half  a  can  of  kerosene,  and  got  the  stove  red- 
hot;  and  then  he  turned  round  to  warm  his  back,  and 
smelled  smoke,  and  whirled  about  to  find  his  tent  in  a 
blaze ! 

With  a  bucket  of  water  and  a  broomstick  he  beat  out 
the  fire,  and  went  for  a  run  to  warm  up.  But  when 
he  came  back  there  was  more  wind,  so  that  he  could  not 
keep  warm  in  the  tent,  and  more  rain,  so  that  he  could 
not  find  shelter  in  the  woods.  In  the  end  he  discovered 
a  ruined  barn,  in  a  corner  of  which  he  would  sit, 
wrapped  in  his  blankets  and  writing  with  cold  fingers. 

Perhaps  all  these  mishaps  had  something  to  do  with 
the  refusal  of  his  ideas  to  flow.  But  apparently  it  was 
in  vain  that  Thyrsis  tried  at  any  time  to  work  at  things 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH  329 

that  were  interesting  to  other  people.  Perhaps  he 
could  have  worked  better  at  them,  if  there  had  not  been 
so  many  things  that  were  interesting  to  him.  He 
would  find  himself  confronted  with  the  image  of  the 
society  clergyman,  or  of  the  sleek  editor  in  his  club, 
or  some  other  memory  out  of  the  world  of  luxury  and 
pride.  And  each  day  came  the  newspaper,  with  its 
burden  of  callousness  and  scorn;  and  perhaps  also  a 
letter  from  Corydon,  with  something  to  goad  him  to 
new  tilts  with  the  enemies  of  his  soul. 

So,  before  long,  almost  without  realizing  it,  he  was 
putting  the  "interesting"  things  aside,  and  girding 
himself  for  another  battle.  His  message  was  still  un 
delivered  ;  and  in  vain  he  sought  to  content  himself 
by  blaming  the  world  for  this.  Until  he  had  forced 
the  world  to  hear  him,  he  had  simply  not  yet  done  his 
work.  He  must  take  his  thought  and  shape  it  anew — 
into  some  art-work  finer,  stronger,  truer  than  he  had 
yet  achieved. 

Day  after  day  he  pondered  this  idea — eating  with  it 
and  walking  with  it  and  sleeping  with  it;  until  at  last, 
of  a  sudden,  the  vision  came  to  him.  It  came  late  at 
night,  while  he  was  undressing;  and  he  sat  for  five 
or  ten  minutes,  with  his  shirt  half  off,  as  if  in  a  trance. 
Then  he  put  the  shirt  on  again,  and  went  out  to  wander 
about  the  woods,  laughing  and  talking  to  himself. 

"Genius  surrounded  by  Commercialism" — that  was 
his  theme;  and  it  would  have  to  be  a  play.  Its  hero 
would  be  a  young  musician,  a  mere  boy,  a  master  of 
the  demon-voices  of  the  violin ;  he  would  be  rapt  in  his 
vision,  and  around  him  a  group  of  people  who  would 
be  embodiments  of  the  world  and  all  its  forces  of  evil. 
One  by  one  they  came  trooping  before  Thyrsis'  fancy, 
with  all  their  trappings  of  pomp  and  power,  their  great- 


330  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ness  and  their  greed — sinister  and  cruel  figures,  but 
also  humorous,  very  creatures  of  the  spirit  of  comedy ! 
Yes,  he  had  a  comedy  this  time — a  real  comedy ! 

§  2.  IN  this  hour,  of  course,  Thyrsis  forgot  all 
about  the  "plot"  he  had  outlined  to  Mr.  Ardsley,  and 
about  his  promises  to  be  "practical."  Something  arose 
within  him,  imperious  and  majestic,  and  swept  all  this 
out  of  the  way  with  one  gesture  of  the  hand.  He 
dropped  everything  else  and  plunged  into  the  play. 
Never  yet  in  his  life  had  anything  taken  hold  of  him 
to  such  an  extent;  it  drove  him  so  that  he  forgot  to 
eat,  he  forgot  to  sleep.  He  would  work  over  some 
part  of  it  until  he  was  exhausted — and  then,  without 
warning,  some  other  part  would  open  out  in  a  vista 
before  him,  and  he  would  spring  up  in  pursuit  of 
that.  Characters  and  episodes  and  dialogue,  wild 
humor,  scalding  satire,  grim  tragedy — they  thronged 
and  jostled  and  crowded  one  another  in  his  imagination. 

"The  Genius"  was  the  title  of  the  play.  Its  prot 
agonist  had  come  home  after  completing  his  education 
in  Vienna;  and  there  was  the  family  gathered  to  greet 
him.  Mr.  Hartman,  the  father,  was  a  wholesale  grocer 
— a  business  large  enough  to  have  brought  wealth,  but 
painfully  tainted  with  "commonness".  Then  there  was 
Mrs.  Hartman,  stout  and  tightly-laced,  who  had  studied 
the  science  of  elegance  while  her  husband  studied 
sugar.  There  was  the  elder  son,  who  under  his  mother's 
guidance  had  married  well;  and  Miss  Violet  Hartman, 
who  was  looking  up  to  the  perilous  heights  of  a  foreign 
alliance. 

Only  of  late  had  the  family  come  to  realize  what  an 
asset  to  their  career  this  "Genius"  might  be.  They 
rnd  humored  him  in  his  strange  whim  to  devote  his  life 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH 

to  fiddling;  money  had  been  spent  on  him  freely — he 
brought  home  with  him  a  famous  Cremona  instrument 
for  which  three  thousand  dollars  had  been  paid.  But 
now  it  was  dawning  upon  them  that  this  was  an  "ugly 
duckling" ;  he  was  to  make  his  debut  in  the  metropolis, 
where  an  overwhelming  triumph  was  expected ;  and  then 
he  would  return  to  the  home  city  in  the  middle  West,  and 
would  play  at  music  ales,  which  even  the  most  exclusive 
of  the  "elite"  must  attend. 

There  was  also  the  great  Prof.  Reminitsky,  the 
teacher  who  had  made  Lloyd,  and  had  come  to  New  York 
with  him;  and  there  was  the  Herr  Prof,  von  Arne,  of 
the  University  of  Berlin,  a  world-renowned  psychia 
trist,  author  of  "The  Neurosis  of  Inspiration".  The 
Herr  Professor  had  come  to  America  to  make  some 
studies  for  his  forthcoming  masterpiece  on  the  religious 
mania ;  and  he  was  glad  to  see  his  old  friend  Reminitsky, 
whose  seventeen-year-old  musical  prodigy  was  most  in 
teresting  material  for  study. 

Prof.  Reminitsky  was  the  world's  greatest  authority 
in  the  art  of  tearing  the  human  soul  to  pieces  by  means 
of  horse-hair  rubbed  with  resin  and  scraped  over  the  in 
testines  of  a  pig.  There  were  no  tricks  of  finger-gym 
nastics  and  of  tone-production  that  he  had  not  mas 
tered.  As  for  the  emotions  produced  thereby,  he  felt 
them,  but  in  a  purely  professional  way;  that  is,  the 
convictions  he  had  concerning  them  related  to  their  ef 
fects  upon  audiences,  and  more  especially  upon  the 
score  or  two  of  critical  experts  whose  psychology  had 
been  his  life-study.  But  having  studied  also  the  psy 
chology  of  youth,  he  knew  that  his  protege  must  needs 
have  other  convictions  concerning  his  performances. 
This  vas  his  -upreme  greatness — that  he  understood 


332  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  paranoia  of  enthusiasm,  and  used  this  understand 
ing  to  tempt  his  pupils  to  new  heights  of  achievement. 

In  all  of  which,  of  course,  his  friend  von  Arne  was 
a  great  help  to  him.  Von  Arne  had  dug  through  a 
score  of  great  libraries,  and  had  travelled  all  the  world 
over,  frequenting  cafes  and  salons,  monasteries  and 
prayer-cells,  prisons  and  hospitals  and  asylums — wher 
ever  one  might  get  new  glimpses  of  the  extraordinarily 
intricate  phenomena  of  the  aberration  called  "Genius". 
He  had  several  thousand  cases  of  it  at  his  finger-tips 
— he  had  measured  its  reaction-times  and  calculated  its 
cephalic  index,  and  analyzed  its  secretions  and  tested  it 
for  indecan.  He  knew  trance  and  clairvoyance,  auto 
suggestion  and  telepathic  hallucination,  epilepsy  and 
hysteria  and  ecstasy ;  and  over  the  head  of  any  disputa 
tious  person  he  would  swing  the  steam-shovel  of  his 
erudition,  and  bury  the  unfortunate  beneath  a  wagon- 
load  of  Latin  and  Greek  derivatives. 

Also,  there  was  Moses  Rosen,  the  business-manager. 
Moses  was  short,  and  wore  a  large  diamond  ring,  and  he 
also  was  a  specialist  in  the  phenomena  of  "Genius". 
He  studied  them  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  box- 
office,  and  his  tests  were  quite  as  definite  as  those  of 
the  psychological  laboratory.  There  came  to  Moses 
an  endless  stream  of  prodigies,  all  of  them  having  long 
hair  and  picturesque  aspects,  and  talking  rapidly  and 
rolling  their  eyes;  the  problem  was  to  determine  which 
of  them  had  the  faculty  of  true  Genius,  which  not  only 
talked  rapidly  and  rolled  its  eyes,  but  also  had  the 
power  of  causing  money  to  flow  in  through  a  box-office 
window. 

In  this  case  Moses  felt  that  the  prospects  were  good ; 
the  only  trouble  being  that  the  prodigy  intended  to 
render  a  concerto  by  a  strange  composer — a  stormy 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN   LEASH  333 

and  unconventional  thing  which  would  annoy  the  critics. 
Moses  suggested  something  that  was  "classic" ;  and 
agreed  with  Mrs.  Hartman  that  there  ought  to  be  some 
thing  corresponding  to  "good  form"  in  music. 

§  3.  So  all  these  strange  creatures  were  poking  and 
peering  and  smelling  about  the  "Genius" ;  and  mean 
while,  there  came  at  intervals  faint  strains  of  music 
from  a  distant  room.  At  last  Lloyd  Hartman  entered ; 
beautiful,  pale  and  sensitive — a  haunted  boy,  and  the 
most  haunting  figure  that  had  yet  come  to  Thyrsis' 
imagination.  Also,  it  was  the  hardest  piece  of  work 
he  had  ever  undertaken;  for  the  character  had  come 
to  him,  not  as  a  formula  or  a  collection  of  phrases, 
but  as  an  intuition,  a  part  of  his  own  soul ;  and  he 
would  work  out  a  scene  a  score  of  times,  finding  words 
to  phrase  it,  and  then  rejecting  them.  By  what 
speeches  could  he  give  his  sense  of  the  gulf  that  lay 
between  Lloyd  and  the  people  about  him?  For  this 
boy  could  not  cope  with  them  in  argument,  he  would 
have  no  mastery  of  the  world  of  facts.  He  must  be 
without  any  touch  of  sophistication,  of  cynicism;  and 
yet,  when  he  spoke  to  them,  it  must  be  clear  that  he 
knew  them  for  different  beings  from  himself.  He  would 
go  with  them  meekly ;  but  one  would  feel  that  it  was  be 
cause  his  path  lay  in  their  direction.  When  the  point 
came  that  their  ways  parted,  he  would  go  his  own  way ; 
and  just  there  lay  the  seed  of  the  tragi-comedy. 

The  family  gathers  about  him,  and  he  answers  their 
questions.  He  will  wear  the  kind  of  tie  that  his  sister 
prefers,  and  they  may  set  any  date  they  please  for  the 
musicales  at  home.  He  hears  the  "copy"  which  Moses 
has  prepared  for  his  advertisements ;  and  then  he  sits, 
absent-minded,  while  they  talk  about  him.  Music  is  in 


334  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  thoughts,  and  gradually  it  steals  into  his  aspect  and 
the  gestures  of  his  hand.  They  watch  him,  and  a  pall 
comes  over  them :  until  at  last  the  mother  exclaims  that 
he  makes  her  nervous,  and  leads  the  family  off. 

Then  Miss  Arnold  is  announced — Helena  Arnold, 
who  has  been  recommended  as  accompanist  at  the  great 
concert.  She  is  young  and  beautiful;  and  the  two  go 
into  the  next  room  to  play,  while  the  professors  remain 
to  talk  over  this  new  complication. 

Prof,  von  Arne,  of  course,  lays  especial  emphasis 
upon  the  sex-element  in  psychopathology ;  he  and  Remi- 
nitsky  have  talked  the  subject  out  many  years  ago, 
and  adopted  a  definite  course  of  action.  The  abnormali 
ties  incidental  to  sex-repression  were  innumerable,  and 
for  the  most  part  destructive;  but  there  could  be  no 
question  that  all  the  more  striking  phenomena  of  the 
neurosis  called  "Genius"  were  greatly  increased  in  their 
intensity  by  this  means.  So,  in  dealing  with  his  pupils, 
and  especially  with  a  prodigy  like  young  Hartman, 
Prof.  Reminitsky  would  call  into  service  all  the  para 
phernalia  of  religious  mysticism;  teaching  his  pupil 
to  regard  woman  as  the  object  of  exalted  adoration, 
a  being  too  holy  to  be  attained  to  even  in  thought.  And 
now,  of  course,  when  the  proposed  accompanist  turns 
out  to  be  a  decidedly  alluring  young  female,  it  is  neces 
sary  to  take  careful  heed. 

Meanwhile  from  the  distance  come  bursts  of  wild 
music ;  and  at  last  Helena  returns — pale,  and  deeply 
agitated.  "It  is  that  concerto!"  she  says,  and  then  asks 
to  be  excused  from  talking.  Lloyd  comes,  and  stands 
by  the  door  watching  her.  When  his  teacher  begins  to 
open  business  negotiations,  he  asks  him  abruptly  to 
leave  them  alone. 

Helena   asks,   "Who   wrote   that  music?"      He  tells 


THE  CAPTIVE   IN   LJEASH  335 

her  a  ghastly  story  of  a  titan  soul  who  starved  in  a 
garret  and  shot  himself,  crushed  by  the  mockery  of 
the  world. 

"I  might  have  saved  him!"  the  boy  exclaims.  "I 
was  so  busy  with  the  music  I  forgot  the  man!" 

They  talk  about  this  epoch-making  concerto,  and 
how  Lloyd  means  to  force  it  upon  the  public.  "And 
you  shall  play  it  with  me!"  he  exclaims.  "You  are  the 
first  that  has  ever  understood  it !" 

"I  cannot  play  it !"  she  protests ;  to  which  he  answers, 
"It  was  like  his  voice  come  back  from  the  grave !"  And 
so  we  see  these  two  souls  cast  into  the  crucible  together. 

§  4.  THE  second  act  showed  the  aftermath  of  the 
great  concert,  and  took  place  in  the  drawing-room  of 
the  Hartman  family's  apartment,  at  four  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  We  see  Moses  and  the  two  professors, 
who  have  not  been  able  to  tear  themselves  away ;  dis 
hevelled,  distrait,  wild  with  vexation,  they  pace  about 
and  lament.  Failure,  utter  ruin  confronts  them — the 
structure  of  their  hopes  lies  in  the  dust !  They  blame  it 
all  on  "that  woman" — and  members  of  the  family  con- 
<*ir  in  this.  It  was  she  who  kept  Lloyd  to  his  resolve 
to  play  that  mad  concerto;  and  then,  to  cast  aside  all 
the  master  had  taught  them,  all  the  results  of  weeks 
of  drilling — and  to  play  it  in  that  frantic,  d,emonic 
fashion.  Now  the  men  await  the  morning  papers,  which 
will  bring  them  the  verdict  of  "the  world" ;  and  they 
shudder  with  the  foreknowledge  of  what  that  verdict 
will  be. 

Lloyd  and  Helena  enter.  They  have  been  walking 
for  hours,  and  have  not  been  thinking  of  "the  world". 
They  listen,  half -heeding,  to  the  protests  and  laments; 


336  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

they  could  not  help  it,  they  explain — the  music  took 
hold  of  them. 

The  two  professors  go  off  to  get  the  papers,  and 
Moses  goes  into  the  next  room  to  rest;  after  which  it 
becomes  clear  to  the  audience  that  Lloyd  and  Helena 
are  fighting  the  sex-duel. 

"You  do  not  care  about  people,"  she  is  saying,  som 
brely. 

To  which  his  reply  is,  "It  is  not  to  be  found  in 
people." 

"And  yet  from  people  it  must  come!"  she  insists. 

He  answers,  "They  do  not  even  know  what  I  mean; 
and  they  have  no  humility." 

"It  is  a  problem,"  Lloyd  continues,  after  a  pause. 
"Shall  one  go  on  alone,  or  wait  and  bring  others  with 
him? — You  have  brought  that  problem  into  my  life." 

She  answers  to  this,  "I  cannot  see  how  my  love  will 
hinder  you." 

He  replies,  "If  you  love  mey  who  will  love  my  art?" 

So  it  goes — until  the  professors  return  with  their 
freight  of  the  world's  Philistinism.  And  here  came  a 
scene,  over  which  Thyrsis  shook  for  many  a  day  with 
merriment.  The  accounts  of  the  concert  are  read; 
Moses  awakens  and  comes  in ;  and  as  the  agony  in 
creases,  the  members  of  the  family  appear,  one  by  one, 
clad  in  their  dressing-gowns,  and  adding  their  lamenta 
tions  to  the  chorus.  Gone  is  all  the  prestige  of  the  two 
professors,  gone  all  the  profits  of  Moses,  gone  all  the 
visions  of  social  triumphs  in  the  city  of  the  middle 
West! 

To  all  of  which  uproar  the  two  listen  patiently ;  un 
til  at  last  the  mother,  in  a  transport  of  vexation,  turns 
upon  Helena,  and  accuses  her  of  ensnaring  the  boy. 
And  then — the  climax  of  the  scene — Lloyd  springs  up ; 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH  337 

all  that  Genius  in  him,  which  has  so  far  gone  into  music, 
turns  now  into  rage  and  scorn.  He  pictures  these 
people — pawing  over  his  inspiration  with  their  unclean 
hands — peering  at  it,  weighing  it,  chaffering  over  it — 
taking  it  into  the  market-place  to  be  hawked  about.  He 
shows  them  what  they  are,  and  what  that  "world"  is, 
to  which  they  would  offer  his  muse  as  a  whore.  And 
then  at  the  climax  of  his  speech,  as  he  is  waving  his 
violin  in  the  air,  the  Herr  Prof,  von  Arne  ventures  to 
put  in  a  word ;  and  the  boy  whirls  upon  him,  and  brings 
down  the  three  thousand-dollar  treasure  upon  the  emi 
nent  psychiatrist's  head! 

§  5.  THE  third  act,  which  was  the  hardest  of  all 
to  write,  was  to  take  place  in  a  garret.  Lloyd  has  gone 
away  alone,  and  three  years  have  passed,  and  now  he 
lies  dying  of  a  wasting  disease.  Helena  has  come  to 
him  again — and  still  they  are  fighting  the  duel.  "A 
woman  will  do  anything  for  a  man  but  renounce  him," 
says  Lloyd;  and  she  cannot  understand  this  fierce  in 
stinct  of  his. 

She  has  come  and  found  him ;  and  he  lies  gasping  for 
breath,  and  speaking  in  broken  sentences.  Yet  he  will 
not  have  her  bring  grief  into  his  chamber ;  he  has  fought 
his  way  through  grief,  and  through  hatred  and  con 
tempt,  and  now  he  lies  at  peace  upon  the  bosom  of 
nature.  No  longer  is  he  wrapped  up  in  his  own  vision ; 
he  has  learned  from  the  million  suns  in  the  sky  and 
the  million  trees  of  the  forest.  He  tells  her  that  the 
thing  called  "Genius"  springs  ceaselessly  from  the 
heart  of  life. 

He  has  cast  out  fear;  and  with  it  he  has  cast  out 
love.  "What  are  you?"  he  asks.  "What  am  I?"  And 
he  sets  forth  in  blazing  words  his  vision  of  the  soul, 


838  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

which  is  as  a  flash  of  light  in  a  raindrop,  and  yet  one 
with  the  eternal  process.  As  the  fruit  of  his  life  he 
leaves  one  symphony  in  manuscript,  and  some  pages 
of  writing  in  which  he  has  summed  up  his  faith.  That 
is  enough,  he  says — that  is  victory;  for  that  he  fled 
away,  and  killed  his  love. 

The  two  professors  come,  having  learned  that  Lloyd 
is  dying.  But  even  they  cannot  divert  him.  He  tells 
von  Arne  that  his  learning  will  submit  itself,  and  that 
scientists  will  be  as  gardeners,  tending  the  young 
flowers  of  faith.  His  mother  and  father  come,  and  he 
whispers  that  even  for  them  there  is  hope — that  in  the 
deepest  mire  of  respectability  the  spark  of  the  soul  still 
glows.  His  mother  bursts  into  weeping  by  his  bed,  and 
he  tells  her  that  even  from  the  dungeon  of  pride  there 
may  be  deliverance.  So  he  sends  them  all  away  to 
pray. 

Then  Helena  sits  at  the  piano  and  plays  a  few  bars 
of  that  sonata  of  Beethoven's  which  is  an  utterance  of 
most  poignant  grief,  and  which  some  publisher  has 
cruelly  misnamed  the  "Moonlight".  And  after  long 
silence,  the  dying  man  communes  with  his  muse.  A 
light  suffuses  the  room,  and  he  whispers,  "Take  thine 
own  time;  for  the  seeds  of  thy  glories  are  planted  in 
the  hearts  of  men!" 

§  6.  OVER  these  things  Thyrsis  would  work  for  six 
hours  at  a  stretch,  sitting  without  moving  a  muscle ; 
for  days  and  nights  he  would  wander  about  at  random 
in  the  woods.  He  ate  irregularly,  of  such  things  as 
he  could  put  his  hands  upon ;  and  sleep  fled  from  him 
like  a  mistress  spurned.  When,  after  a  couple  of 
months,  he  had  finished  the  task,  there  was  an  incessant 
throbbing  in  his  forehead,  and — alas  for  the  sudden 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN   LEASH  339 

tumble  from  the  heights  of  Parnassus ! — he  had  lost 
almost  entirely  the  power  of  digesting  food. 

But  the  play  was  done.  He  sent  it  off  to  be  copied, 
and  wrote  paeans  of  thanksgiving  to  Corydon.  Once 
more  he  had  a  weapon,  newly-forged  and  sharpened* 
wherewith  to  pierce  that  tough  hide  of  the  world ! 

There  remained  the  practical  question:  What  did 
one  do  when  he  had  a  play  completed?  What  was  the 
first  step  to  be  taken?  Thyrsis  pondered  the  problem 
for  several  days;  and  then,  as  chance  would  have  it, 
his  eye  was  caught  by  a  newspaper  paragraph  to  the 
effect  that  "Ethelynda  Lewis,  the  popular  comedienne, 
is  to  be  starred  in  a  serious  drama  next  season,  under 
the  management  of  Robertson  Jones.  Miss  Lewises 
play  has  not  yet  been  selected."  Now,  as  it  happened, 
"Ethelynda  Lewis"  had  been  on  the  play-bill  of  "The 
Princess  of  Prague",  that  tragic  "musical  comedy"  to 
which  Thyrsis  had  been  taken ;  but  he  never  noticed  the 
names  of  actors  and  actresses,  and  had  no  suspicions. 
He  sent  his  manuscript  to  this  future  star ;  and  a  week 
later  came  a  note,  written  on  scented  monogram  paper 
in  a  tall  and  distinguished  chirography,  acknowledging 
the  receipt  of  his  play  and  promising  to  read  it. 

Then  Thyrsis  turned  to  attack  the  manuscripts  which 
had  been  accumulating  while  he  was  writing.  They  were 
coming  more  frequently  now — apparently  Mr.  Ardsley 
liked  his  work.  To  Corydon,  who  had  gone  to  the 
country  with  her  parents,  he  wrote  that  he  was  getting 
some  money  ahead,  and  so  she  might  join  him  before 
long. 

This  brought  him  a  deluge  of  letters ;  and  it  forced 
him  to  another  swift  descent  into  the  world  of  reality. 
"I  have  told  you  nothing  of  my  sufferings,"  wrote  Cory 
don.  "At  least  a  score  of  times  I  have  written  you  long 


340  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

letters  and  then  torn  them  up,  saying  that  your  work 
must  not  be  disturbed.  But  oh,  Thyrsis,  I  do  not 
think  I  can  stand  it  much  longer!  Can  you  imagine 
what  it  means  to  be  shut  up  in  a  boarding-house,  with 
out  one  living  soul  to  understand  about  me?" 

She  would  go  on  to  tell  of  her  griefs  and  humilia 
tions,  her  longings  and  rages  and  despairs.  Then, 
too,  Cedric  was  not  growing  as  he  should.  "He  is  beau 
tiful,"  she  wrote,  "and  every  one  loves  him.  But  he 
makes  not  the  least  attempt  to  sit  up,  and  I  am  very 
much  worried.  I  fear  that  I  ought  not  to  go  on  nurs 
ing  him — I  am  too  nervous  to  eat  as  I  should.  And  then 
I  think  of  the  winter,  and  that  we  may  still  be  sepa 
rated,  and  I  do  not  see  how  I  am  to  ctand  it.  It  is  as 
if  I  were  in  a  prison.  I  think  of  you,  and  I  cannot 
make  you  real  to  me." 

To  all  of  which  Thyrsis  could  only  reply  with  vague 
hopes — and  then  go  away  for  a  tramp  in  the  forest, 
and  call  to  his  soul  for  new  courage.  He  had  still 
troubles  enough  of  his  own.  For  one  thing,  the  fiend 
in  his  stomach  was  not  to  be  exorcised  by  any  spell  he 
knew.  It  was  all  very  picturesque  to  portray  one's 
hero  as  dying  of  disease;  but  in  reality  it  was  not  at 
all  satisfactory.  Thyrsis  did  not  die,  he  merely  ate  a 
bowl  of  bread  and  milk,  and  then  went  about  for  several 
hours,  feeling  as  if  there  were  a  football  blown  up  in 
side  of  him. 

He  had  a  touching  faith  in  the  medical  profession 
in  those  days,  and  whenever  there  was  anything  wrong 
with  him,  he  would  turn  the  problem  over  to  a  doctor 
and  his  soul  would  be  at  rest.  In  this  case  the  doctor 
told  him  that  he  had  dyspepsia — not  a  very  difficult 
diagnosis — and  gave  him  a  bottle  full  of  a  red  liquid 
to  be  taken  after  meals.  To  Thyrsis  this  seemed  an 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH 

example  of  the  marvels  of  science,  of  the  adjustment  of 
means  to  ends ;  for  behold,  when  he  had  taken  the  red 
liquid,  the  bread  and  milk  disappeared  as  if  by  magic ! 
And  he  might  go  on  and  eat  anything  else — if  there  was 
trouble,  he  had  only  to  take  more  of  the  red  liquid !  So 
he  plunged  into  work  on  a  pot-boiler,  and  wrote  Cory- 
don  to  be  of  cheer,  that  the  dawn  was  breaking. 

§  7.  CORYDON,  in  the  meantime,  had  received  a  copy 
of  his  play;  and  he  was  surprised  at  the  effect  it  had 
upon  her.  "It  is  marvellous,"  she  wrote;  "it  is  like  a 
blaze  of  lightning  from  one  end  to  the  other.  And 
yet,  much  as  I  rejoice  in  its  power,  the  main  feeling  it 
brought  me  was  of  anguish ;  for  it  seemed  to  me  as  if 
in  this  play  you  had  spoken  out  of  your  inmost  soul. 
Can  it  be  that  you  are  really  chafing  against  the  bond 
of  our  love  ?  That  you  feel  that  I  have  hold  of  you  and 
cling  to  you ;  and  that  you  resent  it,  and  shrink  from 
me?  Oh  Thy r sis,  what  can  I  do?  Shall  I  bid  you  go, 
and  blot  the  thought  of  you  from  my  mind?  Is  that 
what  you  truly  want?  'A  woman  will  do  anything  for 
a.  man  but  renounce  him !'  Did  you  not  shudder  for 
me  when  you  wrote  those  words? 

"It  is  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  so  far  I  have 
not  been  able  to  sleep.  I  have  lain  awake  with  torturing 
thoughts ;  and  then  the  baby  wakened  up,  and  I  had  to 
put  him  to  sleep  again — any  indisposition  of  mine 
always  affects  him.  I  am  sitting  on  the  floor  at  the  foot 
of  the  bed,  writing  with  a  candle;  and  hoping  to  get 
myself  sufficiently  exhausted,  so  that  I  shall  no  longer 
lie  awake. 

"Go  and  find  your  vision  over  my  corpse,  and  may 
God  bless  you !  .  .  .  I  wrote  that  hours  ago,  and  I  tried 
to  mean  it.  I  try  to  tell  myself  that  I  will  take  the 


342  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

child  and  go  away,  and  crush  my  own  hopes  and  yearn 
ings,  and  give  my  life  to  him.  But  no — I  cannot,  I 
cannot !  It  is  perfectly  futile  for  me  to  think  of  tjiat— 
I  crave  for  life,  and  I  cannot  give  up.  There  is  that 
in  me  that  will  never  yield,  that  will  take  no  refusal. 
Sometimes  I  see  myself  as  a  woman  of  seventy,  still 
seeking  my  life.  Do  you  not  realize  that?  I  feel  that 
I  shall  never  grow  old! 

"How  strange  a  thing  it  is,  Thyrsis,  that  you  and  I, 
who  might  do  so  much  with  so  little  chance,  should  have 
no  chance  at  all.  I  read  of  other  poets  and  their  wives 
— at  least  they  managed  to  have  a  hut  on  some  hillside, 
and  they  did  not  absolutely  starve. 

"I  am  tired  now;  perhaps  I  can  sleep.  But  I  will 
tell  you  something,  Thyrsis — does  it  sound  so  very 
foolish  ?  Not  only  will  I  never  grow  old,  but  I  will  never 
give  up  your  love!  Yes,  some  day  you  will  find  out 
how  to  seek  your  vision  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  am 
your  wife!" 

§  8.  ANOTHER  day,  there  would  be  moods  of  peace, 
and  even  of  merriment ;  it  was  always  like  putting  one's 
hand  into  a  grab-bag,  to  open  a  new  letter  from  Cory- 
don.  In  after  years  he  would  read  them,  and  strange 
were  the  memories  they  brought ! 

"My  Thyrsis,"  she  wrote:  "I  have  been  reading  a 
story  of  Heine  in  Zangwill's  "Dreamers  of  the  Ghetto". 
I  did  not  know  about  Heine.  He  loved  and  married  a 
sweet  little  woman  of  the  people — Mathilde — who  didn't 
appreciate  his  writings.  I  am  not  only  going  to  love 
you,  but  I  am  going  to  appreciate  your  writings  !  Some 
day  I  am  going  to  be  educated — and  won't  it  be  fine 
when  I  am  educated? 

"I  keep  very  busy,  but  I  have  not  so  much  time  as  I 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN   LEASH  343 

had  last  summer.  I  live  almost  all  my  life  in  hope — the 
present  is  nothing.  I  think  I  get  more  strength  by 
gazing  at  my  baby  than  in  any  other  way.  I  wonder 
if  I  can  ever  infuse  into  him  my  inspiration  and  my 
desire.  It  is  wonderfully  exciting  to  me  to  think  of 
what  a  free  soul  could  do,  if  it  possessed  my  spirit  and 
my  dreams.  Ah,  even  you  don't  know !  I  smile  to  my 
self  when  I  think  how  surprised  you  might  some  day 
be!  Oh,  my  baby,  my  baby,  surely  you  will  not  fail 
me — little  soul  that  is  to  be.  This  is  what  I  say  to  him, 
and  then  I  squeeze  him  in  ecstasy,  and  he  coughs  up  his 
milk.  Dear  funny  little  thing,  that  is  so  pleased  with 
a  red,  white  and  blue  rattle.  At  present  he  is  grinning 
at  it  ecstatically — and  he  is  truly  most  horribly  cun 
ning.  His  favorite  expression  is  'Ah-boo,  ah-boo' ;  and 
is  not  that  just  too  bright?  Everybody  tries  to  spoil 
him — even  a  twelve-year-old  boy  here  wanted  to  kiss 
him.  And  wonder  of  wonders,  he  has  two  teeth  appear 
ing  in  his  lower  gums !  Poor  me — he  bites  hard  enough 
as  he  is." 

And  then  again : 

"My  Beloved :  I  am  sitting  with  my  candle  once  more. 
It  is  too  hot  for  a  lamp.  I  have  been  reading  'Paradise 
Lost',  and  truly  I  am  astonished  that  it  is  so  beautiful. 
Also  I  have  been  reading  a  book  about  Unitarianism,  and 
I  did  not  know  that  such  things  had  been  written.  But 
I  think  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  call  one's  self  a 
Unitarian.  I  was  thinking  that  I  will  go  back  and  read 
the  Bible  through.  I  would  not  mind,  if  I  knew  I  did 
not  have  to  believe  it. 

"Also-,  this  week,  I  read  'Paul  and  Virginia'.  Oh, 
do  not  write  anything  to  me  about  our  meeting,  until 
you  are  sure  it  can  be !  It  breaks  my  heart. 

"Did  it   ever   occur  to  you  that  we  might  embark 


344  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

for  the  tropics?  We'd  have  a  hut,  and  I  might  learn  to 
raise  fruits  and  vegetables.  I  sigh  for  some  verdant 
isle — and  I  am  not  joking.  We  might  find  some  place 
where  steamers  came  now  and  then,  and  some  one  in 
New  York  could  attend  to  your  manuscripts. 

"To-night  I  was  trying  to  put  my  baby  to  sleep  and 
he  wouldn't  go,  but  just  lay  in  my  lap  and  kicked  and 
grinned.  I  tried  to  coax  him  to  go  to  sleep,  but  if  I 
was  the  least  bit  impatient  he'd  begin  to  cry.  And 
then  he'd  grin  at  me  so  roguishly,  as  if  to  say,  'Let's 
play  before  I  go  to  sleep !'  Finally  I  looked  right  at 
him  and  said,  'Now,  you  have  played  long  enough,  and 
I  wish  you  to  be  a  good  boy  and  go  to  sleep !'  And 
then  he  laughed,  and  I  put  him  on  his  side  and  he  went 
to  sleep!  Wasn't  that  bright  for  a  baby  just  seven 
months  old? 

"I  think  I  write  you  much  more  interesting  letters 
than  you  write  me.  To  be  sure  I  have  no  books  into 
which  to  put  my  thoughts.  Also,  I  have  a  great  deal 
of  time  to  compose  letters  to  you ;  Cedric  wakes  me  up 
so  much  in  the  night,  and  often  I  cannot  go  to  sleep 
again.  It  plays  havoc  with  me  as  a  rule;  and  yet 
sometimes,  when  I'm  not  too  exhausted,  there  is  a  certain 
joy  in  watching  by  the  dim  candle  light  the  rosy  up 
turned  face  and  the  little  groping  mouth.  Oh  Thyrsis, 
he  is  all  mine  and  yours,  and  we  must  make  him  glad 
he  was  borned,  mustn't  we?" 

§  9.  SUCH  letters  would  come  at  a  time  when  Thyrsis 
was  almost  prostrated  with  exhaustion ;  and  great  waves 
of  loneliness  and  yearning  would  sweep  over  him.  Ah 
God,  what  a  fate  it  was — to  labor  as  he  labored,  and 
then  to  have  no  means  of  recreation  or  respite,  no  hand 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH  345 

to  smooth  his  forehead,  no  voice  to  whisper  solace ! 
Who  could  know  the  tragedy  of  that  aspect  of  his  life? 

There  came  one  day  an  incident  that  almost  broke 
his  heart.  Down  the  lake  came  a  private  yacht,  beauti 
ful  and  swift,  clean  as  a  new  penny,  its  bronze  and  white 
paint  glistening  in  the  sunlight.  It  anchored  not  far 
out  from  the  point  where  Thyrsis  camped,  and  a  boat 
put  off,  and  from  it  three  young  girls  stepped  ashore. 
They  were  slender  and  graceful,  clad  all  in  white — as 
spotless  as  the  vessel  itself,  and  glowing  with  health 
and  joy  fulness.  They  cast  shy  glances  at  the  tent,  and 
asked  Thyrsis  to  direct  them  to  the  nearest  farm-house ; 
he  watched  them  disappear  through  the  woods,  and  saw 
them  return  with  a  basket  of  fruit. 

It  was  just  at  sunset,  and  there  was  a  new  moon  in 
the  sky,  and  the  evening  star  trembled  upon  the  bosom 
of  the  waters.  There  in  the  magic  stillness  lay  the 
vessel — and  suddenly  came  the  sounds  of  a  guitar,  and 
of  young  voices  singing.  Wonderful  to  tell,  they  sang 
— not  "ragtime"  and  "college  songs,"  but  the  chorus 
of  the  "Rheintochter,"  and  Schubert's  "Auf  dem  Was- 
ser  zu  singen",  and  other  music,  unknown  to  Thyrsis, 
exquisite  almost  beyond  enduring.  It  pierced  him  to 
the  heart ;  he  sat  with  his  hands  clenched,  and  every 
nerve  of  him  a-quiver,  and  the  hot  tears  raining  down 
his  cheeks.  It  was  loveliness  not  of  this  earth,  it  was  an 
apparition ;  that  presence  which  had  been  haunting  him 
ever  since  he  had  come  to  this  spot— 

"So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 

And  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 

The  music  died  away,  and  rose  again ;  and  the  deeps 


346  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  his  spirit  were  opened,  and  ecstasy  and  grief  welled 
up  together  within  him.  Then  he  made  out  that  the 
anchor  was  being  lifted ;  and  he  was  tempted  to  spring 
up  and  cry  out  to  them  to  stay.  But  no — what  did 
they  know  of  him?  What  would  they  care  about  him? 
So  he  crouched  by  the  bank,  drinking  greedily  the 
precious  notes ;  and  as  the  yacht  with  its  gleaming 
lights  stole  away  into  the  twilight,  all  the  poet's  soul 
went  yearning  with  it.  Still  he  could  hear  the  faint 
strains  swelling — 

"Blow,  blow,  breathe  and  blow, 
Wind   of   the  western    sea!" 

He  sat  with  his  face  hidden  in  his  hands,  shuddering. 
Here  he  was,  wrestling  in  the  pit  with  sickness  and 
despair — and  there  above  him  were  the  heights  of  art. 
If  only  he  could  live  with  such  music,  what  prodigies 
could  he  not  perform.  And  they  who  possessed  it — 
did  it  mean  to  them  what  it  meant  to  him?  They  who 
had  everything  that  life  could  offer — music  and  art, 
freedom  and  beauty  and  health — all  the  treasures  of 
life  as  their  birthright — had  they  never  a  thought  of 
those  who  had  nothing,  and  were  set  to  slave  in  the  gal 
leys  of  their  pleasure-craft? 

Thyrsis  was  always  coming  upon  some  aspect  of  this 
thing  called  Privilege.  Corydon  had  suggested  that 
there  might  be  some  work  that  she  could  do  at  home ; 
and  so  one  day  he  was  looking  over  the  advertisements 
in  a  newspaper,  and  came  upon  a  composition  by  a  man 
who  was  seeking  a  governess  for  his  three  children. 
It  was  written  in  a  style  all  its  own ;  it  revealed  a  person 
accustomed  to  specify  exactly  what  he  wanted,  and  it 
occupied  three  or  four  inches,  as  if  symbolic  of  the  fact 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN  LEASH  347 

that  he  did  not  consider  expense.  He  described  the  life 
of  his  children;  they  had  servants  and  a  tutor  to  at 
tend  to  their  physical  and  mental  needs,  and  the  father 
now  sought  a  friend  and  companion,  to  take  charge 
of  their  spiritual  and  social  development.  The  specifi 
cations  evoked  a  picture  of  an  establishment,  in  which 
all  the  community's  resources,  all  the  sciences  and  arts 
of  civilization,  were  set  at  work  to  create  joy  and  power 
for  three  young  people.  What  a  contrast  it  made  with 
the  care  that  little  Cedric  was  getting,  as  revealed  in 
his  mother's  letters ! 

Thyrsis  could  see  in  his  mind's  eye  the  master  and 
provider  of  this  establishment.  How  well  he  knew  the 
type — how  often  had  he  sat  in  some  quiet  corner  and 
listened  while  it  revealed  itself,  A  man  alert  and  ag 
gressive;  immaculate  in  appearance  as  the  latest 
fashion-plate,  and  overlaid  with  a  veneer  of  culture — 
yet  underneath  it  still  the  predatory  talons,  the  soul 
of  the  hawk.  He  was  a  "practical"  man ;  that  is,  he 
understood  profit.  He  was  trained  to  see  where  profit 
lay,  and  swift  to  seize  upon  it.  As  a  business-man  he 
ruled  labor,  and  crushed  his  competitors,  and  directed 
legislatures  and  political  machines ;  as  a  lawyer  he  pro 
tected  his  kind  from  attack,  as  a  judge  he  bent  the  law 
to  the  ends  of  greed.  So  he  lived  in  palaces,  and 
travelled  about  in  private-cars  and  yachts,  and  had  ser 
vants  and  governesses  for  his  children,  and  valets  and 
secretaries  to  attend  himself.  And  whenever  by  any 
chance  he  got  a  glimpse  of  Thyrsis'  soul,  how  he  hated 
it!  On  the  other  hand,  to  Thyrsis  he  was  a  portent 
of  terror.  He  ruled  in  every  field  of  human  activity; 
and  yet  one  saw  that  if  his  rule  continued,  it  would 
mean  the  destruction  of  civilization  !  Whenever  Thyrsis 
met  one  of  these  men,  whether  in  imagination  or  reality* 


348  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

he  found  himself  with  hands  clenched,  and  every  nerve 
of  him  a-tingle  with  the  lust  of  combat. 

§  10.  A  MOST  trying  thing  it  was  to  a  man  who 
carried  the  burden  of  the  future  in  his  soul — to  have  to 
wrestle  with  an  obstinate  stomach !  But  so  it  was 
again ;  the  magic  red  liquid  seemed  to  be  losing  its 
power.  Then,  the  pot-boiler  was  not  going  well ;  and  to 
cap  the  climax,  the  manuscripts  stopped  coming.  Thyr- 
sis,  after  waiting  two  or  three  weeks  in  suspense  and 
dread,  wrote  to  Mr.  Ardsley,  and  received  a  reply  to  the 
effect  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  send  any  more.  Mr. 
Ardsley  had  sent  them  because  of  his  interest  in  the 
proposed  "practical"  novel;  and  now  he  had  learned 
that  the  poet  had  been  giving  his  time  to  the  writing  of 
an  impossible  play! 

Thyrsis'  predicament  was  a  desperate  one,  and 
drove  him  to  a  desperate  course.  It  was  now  midsum 
mer  ;  and  run  down  from  overwork  as  he  was,  could  he 
face  the  thought  of  returning  to  the  sweltering  city, 
to  go  to  work  in  some  office?  Or  was  he  to  hire  out  as 
a  farm-laborer,  under  he  knew  not  what  conditions? 
He  recoiled  from  either  of  these  alternatives ;  and  then 
suddenly,  as  he  racked  his  brains,  a  wild  idea  flashed 
over  him.  For  years  he  had  talked  and  dreamed  of  es 
caping  from  civilization.  He  had  pictured  himself 
upon  some  tropic  island,  where  bananas  and  cocoanuts 
grew;  or  again  in  some  Northern  wilderness,  where  he 
might  hunt  and  fish,  and  live  like  the  pioneers.  And 
now — why  not  do  it?  He  had  an  axe  and  a  rifle  and 
a  fishing-rod;  and  only  a  few  days  previously  he  had 
heard  a  man  telling  of  a  lake  in  the  Adirondacks,  where 
not  a  dozen  people  went  in  the  course  of  a  year. 

It  was  early  one  morning  the  idea  came  to  him ;  and 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN  LEASH  349 

within  an  hour  he  had  struck  his  tent  and  packed  his 
trunk.  He  stowed  his  camp-stuff  and  bedding  in  a  dry- 
goods  box,  and  leaving  his  tent  with  the  farmer,  he 
purchased  a  ticket  to  a  place  on  the  edge  of  the  wilder 
ness.  He  put  up  at  a  village-hotel,  and  the  next  day 
cfcro-ve  fifteen  miles  by  a  stage,  and  five  more  by  a  wagon, 
and  spent  the  night  at  a  lumber-camp  far  in  the  wilder 
ness.  The  next  day,  carrying  as  much  of  his  belong 
ings  as  he  could,  he  walked  three  miles  more,  and  came 
to  the  tiny  lake  that  was  his  goal. 

It  was  perhaps  half  a  mile  long;  the  virgin  forest 
hung  about  it  like  a  great  green  curtain,  and  the 
shadows  of  the  blue  mountains  seemed  as  if  painted  upon 
its  surface.  Thyrsis  gave  a  gasp  of  delight  as  he 
pushed  through  the  bushes  and  saw  it ;  he  stripped  and 
plunged  into  the  crystal  water — and  hot  and  tired  and 
soul-sick  as  he-  was,  the  coolness  of  it  was  like  a  clasp 
of  protecting  arms.  There  was  a  rock  rising  from  the 
centre,  and  he  swam  out  and  stood  upon  it,  and  gazed 
about  him  at  all  the  ravishing  beauty,  and  laughed 
and  whooped  so  that  the  mountains  rang  with  the 
echoes. 

He  found  an  abandoned  "open-camp",  or  shed,  the 
roof  of  which  he  made  water-proof  with  newspapers 
and  balsam-boughs.  He  cut  fresh  boughs  for  his  bed, 
and  spread  his  blankets  upon  them,  and  went  back  to 
the  lumber-shanties,  and  purchased  a  box  of  prunes  and 
a  bag  of  rice.  There  were  huckleberries  in  profusion 
upon  the  hills,  and  in  the  lakes  were  fish,  and  in  the 
forests  squirrels  and  rabbits,  partridges  and  deer. 
There  were  the  game-laws,  to  be  sure ;  but  there  was 
also  a  "higher  law",  as  eminent  authorities  had  de 
clared.  As  one  of  the  wits  at  the  lumber-camp  put 


350  LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

It,  "If  any  wild  rabbit  comes  rushing  out  to  bite  you, 
don't  you  hesitate  to  defend  yourself !" 

So,  with  the  sum  of  one  dollar  and  twenty-three  cents 
in  his  pocket-book,  Thyrsis  began  the  happiest  experi 
ence  of  his  life.  He  watched  the  sun  rise  and  set  behind 
the  mountains ;  and  sometimes  he  climbed  to  the  summits 
to  see  it  further  upon  its  way.  He  watched  the  progress 
of  the  tempests  across  the  lake,  and  swam  in  the  water 
while  the  rain  splashed  his  face  and  the  lightning  splin 
tered  the  pines  in  the  forest.  He  crouched  in  the  bushes 
and  saw  the  wild  ducks  feeding,  and  the  deer  that  came 
at  sunset  to  drink.  He  watched  the  loons  diving,  and 
spying  him  out  with  their  wild  eyes — sometimes,  as  they 
rose  in  flight,  beating  the  surface  of  the  water  with  a 
sound  like  thunder.  At  night  he  heard  their  loud 
laughter,  and  the  creaking  cries  of  the  herons  flying 
past.  Sometimes  far  up  in  the  hills  a  she-fox  would 
bark,  or  some  too-aged  tree  of  the  forest  would  come 
down  with  a  booming  crash.  Thyrsis  would  lie  in  his 
open  camp  and  watch  the  moonlight  through  the  pines, 
and  prayers  of  thankfulness  would  well  up  within 
him — 

"Peace  of  the  forest,  rich,  profound, 
Gather  me  closely,  fold  me  round !" 

There  had  been  much  carrying  and  hard  work  to  do 
before  he  was  settled,  and  there  was  more  of  it  all 
through  his  stay.  He  had  to  cook  all  his  meals  and 
clean  up  afterwards ;  and  because  the  nights  were  cold 
and  his  blankets  few,  there  was  much  firewood  to  be 
cut.  Also,  there  was  no  food  unless  he  went  out  and 
found  it,  and  so  he  spent  hours  each  day  tramping 
about  in  the  forests.  By  the  time  he  had  got  home  and 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH  351 

had  cleaned  the  game  and  cooked  it,  he  was  ravenously 
hungry,  and  there  was  never  any  question  as  to  what 
would  digest.  This  was  just  what  he  had  sought;  and 
so  now,  deliberately,  he  banned  all  the  muses  from  his 
presence,  and  poured  the  rest  of  the  dyspepsia-medicine 
into-  the  lake.  His  muscles  became  hard,  and  the  flush 
of  health  returned  to  his  cheeks,  and  as  he  went  about 
his  tasks  he  laughed  and  sang,  and  shouted  his  defiance 
to  the  world.  And  to  Corydon  he  wrote  his  newest  plan 
— to  earn  a  little  in  the  city  that  winter,  and  come  back 
in  the  early  spring  and  build  a  log-cabin  for  herself 
and  the  baby! 

§  11.  TWICE  a  week  his  mail  came  to  the  lumber- 
camp,  in  care  of  the  friendly  foreman.  Each  time  that 
he  went  out  to  get  it,  he  hoped  for  some  new  turn. 
There  was  a  publisher  interested  in  "The  Hearer  of 
Truth,",  and  an  editor  was  reading  "The  Higher 
Cannibalism" ;  also,  and  most  important  of  all,  Miss 
Ethelynda  Lewis  had  now  had  "The  Genius"  for  nearly 
two  months,  and  had  not  yet  reported.  Thyrsis  wrote 
to  remind  her,  and  after  another  two  weeks,  he  wrote 
yet  more  urgently.  At  last  came  a  note — "I  have  been 
away  from  the  city,  and  have  not  had  a  chance  to  read 
the  play.  I  will  attend  to  it  at  once."  And  then,  after 
three  weeks  more,  Thyrsis  wrote  again — and  at  last 
came  a  letter  that  made  his  heart  leap. 

"I  have  read  your  play",  wrote  the  popular  come 
dienne:  "I  am  very  much  interested  in  it  indeed.  I 
have  asked  my  manager  to  read  it,  and  will  write  you 
again  shortly." 

Thyrsis  sent  this  to  Corydon,  and  again  there  was 
rejoicing  and  expectation.  "If  only  I  can  get  the  play 
on,"  he  wrote,  "our  future  is  safe,  for  the  profits  from 


352  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

plays  are  enormous.  It  will  be  a  great  piece  of  luck 
if  I  have  found  the  right  person  at  the  first  attempt." 

More  weeks  passed.  Thyrsis  watched  the  pageant 
of  autumn  upon  the  mountains — he  saw  the  curtains 
of  the  lake-shore  change  to  gold  and  scarlet,  and  from 
that  to  pale  yellow  and  brown ;  and  now,  with  every 
lightest  breeze  that  stirred,  there  were  showers  of  leaves 
came  fluttering  to  the  ground.  The  deer  left  the  lake- 
shore  and  took  to  the  "hard-wood",  and  the  drumming 
of  partridges  thundered  at  sunset.  The  nights  were 
bitterly  cold,  and  he  spent  a  good  part  of  his  day 
chopping  logs  and  carrying  them  to  camp,  so  that  he 
might  keep  a  blazing  fire  all  night.  There  were  hunt 
ing-parties  in  the  woods,  and  he  got  a  deer,  and  sold 
part  of  it,  and  had  the  rest  hanging  near  his  camp. 

And  then  one  night  came  the  first  snow-storm ;  in  the 
morning  it  lay  white  and  sparkling  in  the  sunlight — 
and  oh,  the  wonder  of  a  hunting-trip,  when  the  floor  of 
the  wilderness  was  like  a  page  on  which  could  be  read 
the  tale  of  all  that  happened  in  the  night !  One  could 
hardly  believe  that  so  many  creatures  were  in  these 
woods — there  were  tracks  everywhere  one  looked.  Here 
a  squirrel  had  run,  and  here  a  partridge ;  here  had  been 
a  porcupine,  with  feet  like  a  baby's,  and  here  a  fox,  and 
here  a  bear  with  two  cubs.  And  in  yon  hollow  a  deer 
had  slept  through  the  night,  and  here  he  had  blown 
away  the  snow  from  the  moss ;  here  two  bucks  had 
fought;  and  here  one  of  them  had  been  started  by  a 
hunter,  and  had  bounded  away  with  leaps  that  it  was  a 
marvel  to  measure. 

Thyrsis  nearly  lost  his  life  at  these  fascinating  ad 
ventures  ;  for  another  storm  came  up,  and  covered  his 
tracks,  and  when  he  tried  to  find  his  way  back  by  the 
compass,  he  found  that  he  had  forgotten  which  end  of 


THE   CAPTIVE    IN   LEASH  353 

the  needle  pointed  to  the  North!  So  he  wandered 
about  for  hours ;  and  in  the  end  had  to  decide  by  the 
toss  of  a  penny  whether  he  should  get  out  to  the  main 
road,  or  wander  off  into  twenty  miles  of  trackless  wilder 
ness,  without  either  food  or  matches.  Fortunately  the 
penny  fell  right;  and  he  spent  the  night  at  a  farm 
house,  and  the  next  day  got  back  to  the  lumber-camp. 

And  there  was  a  letter  from  Ethelynda  Lewis  !  Thyr- 
sis  tore  it  open  and  read  this  incredible  message: 

"Your  play  has  been  carefully  considered,  and  I  am 
disposed  to  accept  it.  It  is  certainly  very  unusual  and 
interesting,  and  I  think  it  can  be  made  a  success.  There 
are,  however,  certain  changes  which  ought  to  be  made. 
I  am  wondering  if  you  will  come  to  the  city,  so  that  we 
can  talk  it  over.  It  would  not  be  possible  to  settle  a 
matter  so  important  by  mail;  and  there  is  no  time  to 
be  lost,  for  I  am  ready  to  go  ahead  with  the  work  at 
once,  and  so  is  my  manager." 

§  1£.  NOTHING  that  the  mail  had  ever  brought  to 
Thyrsis  had  meant  so  much  to  him  as  this.  He  was 
transported  with  delight.  Yes,  for  this  he  would  go 
back  to  the  city !  — But  then,  he  caught  his  breath, 
realizing  his  plight.  How  was  he  to  get  to  the  city, 
when  he  had  only  three  dollars  to  his  name? 

He  turned  the  problem  over  in  his  mind.  Should  he 
send  a  telegram  to  some  relative  and  beg  for  help?  No, 
he  had  vowed  to  die  first.  Should  he  write  to  the  actress, 
and  explain?  No,  for  that  would  kill  his  chances. 
There  was  just  one  way  to  be  thought  «of;  venison  in 
the  woods  was  worth  eleven  cents  a  pound,  and  the 
smallest  of  deer"  would  get  him  to  the  city! 

And  so  began  a  great  adventure.  Thyrsis  wrote 
Miss  Ethelynda  that  he  would  come ;  and  that  night  he 


354  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

loaded  up  some  more  buckshot  "shells",  and  before 
<dawn  of  the  next  day  was  out  upon  the  hunt.  The 
snow  was  gone  now ;  and  with  soft  shoes  on  his  feet  he 
wandered  all  day  through  the  wilderness — and  was  re 
warded  by  two  chances  to  shoot  at  the  white  tails  of 
.flying  deer. 

And  then  came  night,  and  he  rigged  up  a  "jack", 
&  forbidden  apparatus  made  of  a  soap-box  and  a  lantern 
and  a  tin-plate  for  a  reflector.  He  had  an  ingenious 
arrangement  of  straps  and  cords,  whereby  he  could 
fasten  this  upon  his  head;  and  he  had  found  an  old 
lumber-trail  where  the  deer  came  to  feed  upon  the  soft 
grass.  Down  this  he  crept  like  a  thief  in  the  night, 
with  the  light  gleaming  ahead,  and  the  deer  tramping 
In  the  thickets  and  whistling  their  alarms.  Now  and 
then  one  would  stand  and  stare,  his  eye-balls  gleaming 
like  coals  of  fire ;  and  at  last  came  the  roar  of  the  gun, 
and  the  jacklight  tumbled  to  the  ground.  When  Thyr- 
sis  lighted  up  again  and  went  to  examine,  there  were 
spots  of  blood  upon  the  leaves — but  no  deer. 

So  the  next  day  he  was  up  again  at  dawn,  watching 
by  one  of  the  runways  to  the  lake.  And  then  came  an 
other  tramp,  through  the  thickets  and  over  the  moun 
tains — and  more  shots  at  the  "flags"  of  the  elusive 
enemy.  Thyrsis'  back  ached,  and  his  feet  were  as  if 
weighted  with  lead,  but  still  he  plodded  on  and  on — it 
was  his  life  against  a  deer's. 

If  only  he  had  had  a  boat,  so  that  he  could  have 
set  up  his  "jack"  in  that!  But  he  had  no  boat — and 
so  he  wrapped  himself  in  blankets  and  sat  to  watch 
another  runway  at  sunset ;  and  when  no  deer  came  he 
decided  to  stay  on  until  the  moon  rose.  It  was  a  bitterly 
>cold  night,  and  his  hands  almost  froze  to  the  gun-barrel 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN  LEASH  355 

when  he  touched  it.    And  the  moon  rose,  and  forthwith 
went  behind  a  cloud — and  then  came  a  deer ! 

There  was  hardly  a  trace  of  motion  in  the  air,  but 
somehow  the  creature  half-scented  Thyrsis;  and  so  it 
stood  and  trumpeted  to  the  night.  Oh,  the  wildness  of 
that  sound — and  the  thumping  of  the  heart  of  the 
hunter,  and  the  breathless  suspense,  and  the  burning 
desire.  The  deer  would  take  a  step,  and  a  twig  would 
crack ;  and  then  it  would  stand  still  again,  and  Thyrsis. 
would  listen,  crouching  like  a  statue,  clutching  his 
weapon  and  striving  to  penetrate  the  darkness.  And 
then  the  deer  would  take  two  or  three  more  steps,  and 
stand  again ;  and  then,  in  sudden  alarm,  bound  away ; 
and  then  come  back  again,  step  by  step — fascinated 
by  this  mysterious  thing  there  in  the  darkness.  For 
three  mortal  hours  that  creature  pranced  and  cavorted 
about  Thyrsis,  while  he  waited  with  chattering  teeth; 
then  in  the  end  it  took  a  sudden  fright,  and  went  bound 
ing  away  through  the  thicket. 

So  came  another  day's  hunting;  and  at  sundown  an 
other  watch  by  a  runway ;  and  another  deer,  that  ap 
proached  from  the  wrong  direction,  and  came  upon  a 
man,  worn  out  by  three  days  and  nights  of  effort,  lying 
sound  asleep  at  his  post! 

But  there  could  be  only  one  ending  to  this  adventure* 
Thyrsis  was  out  for  a  deer,  and  he  would  never  quit 
until  he  got  one.  All  his  planning  and  wandering  had 
availed  him  nothing ;  but  now,  the  next  morning,  as 
he  stepped  out  from  his  camp  with  a  bucket  in  his 
hand — behold,  at  the  edge  of  a  thicket,  a  deer !  Thyrsis, 
stood  rooted  to  the  spot,  staring  blankly ;  and  the  deer- 
stood  staring  at  him. 

It  was  a  time  of  agony.  Should  he  try  to  creep  back 
to  his  gun,  or  should  he  make  a  sudden  dash?  He  started 


356  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

to  try  the  latter,  and  had  a  pang  of  despair  as  the  deer 
whirled  and  bolted  away.  He  leaped  to  the  camp  and 
grabbed  his  gun  and  sprang  out  into  sight  again — 
and  there,  off  to  the  right,  was  another  deer.  It  was 
a  huge  buck,  with  wide-spreading  antlers,  rising  out  of 
the  bushes  where  it  stood.  It  saw  Thyrsis,  and  started 
away ;  and  in  a  flash  he  raised  his  gun  and  fired.  He 
saw  the  deer  stumble,  and  he  fired  the  other  barrel; 
and  then  he  started  in  wild  pursuit. 

He  had  been  warned  to  beware  of  a  wounded  deer ;  but 
he  forgot  that — he  forgot  also  that  he  had  no  more 
shells  upon  him.  He  ran  madly  through  the  forest, 
springing  over  fallen  logs,  plunging  through  thickets 
— he  would  have  seized  hold  of  the  animal  with  his  bare 
hands,  if  only  he  could  have  caught  up  with  it. 

The  deer  was  badly  hurt.  It  would  leap  ahead,  and 
then  stumble,  half  falling,  and  then  leap  again.  Even 
in  this  way,  the  distance  it  covered  was  amazing ;  Thyr 
sis  was  appalled  at  the  power  of  the  creature,  its  tre 
mendous  bounds,  the  shock  of  its  fall,  and  the  crashing 
of  the  underbrush  before  it.  It  seemed  like  a  huge 
boulder,  leaping  down  a  precipice ;  and  Thyrsis  stood 
at  a  safe  distance  and  watched  it.  According  to  the 
poetry-books  he  should  have  been  ashamed — perhaps 
moved  to  tears  by  the  reproachful  look  in  the  great 
creature's  eyes.  But  assuredly  the  makers  of  the 
poetry-books  had  never  needed  the  price  of  a  railroad- 
ticket  as  badly  as  Thyrsis  did ! 

He  only  realized  that  night  how  desperate  his  need 
had  been.  He  lay  in  his  berth  on  board  a  train  for  the 
city — while  back  at  his  "open-camp"  a  wild  blizzard 
was  raging,  and  the  thermometer  stood  at  forty  degrees 
below  zero.  But  Thyrsis  was  warm  and  comfortable; 
and  also  he  was  brown  and  rugged,  once  more  full 


THE   CAPTIVE   IN   LEASH  357 

of  health  and  eagerness  for  life.  All  night  he  listened 
to  the  pounding  of  the  flying  train;  and  fast  as  the 
music  of  it  went,  it  was  not  fast  enough  for  his  imagina 
tion.  It  seemed  as  if  the  rails  were  speaking — 
saying  to  him,  over  and  over  and  over  again,  "Ethelynda 
Lewi*  \  Kthelynda  Lewis !  Ethelynda  Lewis  I" 


BOOK  X 
THE  END  OF  THE  TETHER 


They  sat  still  watching  upon  the  hill-top,  drmk'mg 
in  the  scent  of  the  clover. 

"Ah,  if  only  we  might  have  come  back  here!"  she 
sighed.  "If  only  we  had  never  had  to  leave!" 

"That  way  lies  unhappiness,"  he  said. 

"Perhaps"  she  answered;  and  then  quoted 

'Yet,  Thyrsis,  let  me  give  my  grief  its  hour 

In  the  old  haunt,  and  -find  our  tree-topped  hill! 
Who,  if  not  I,  for  questing  here  hath  power?" 

"I  wonder"  said  he,  "if  the  poet  put  as  much  mto 
these  stanzas  as  we  find  in  them!" 


§  1.  THROUGH  the  summer  Corydon  had  been  living 
week  by  week  upon  the  hope  that  her  husband  would  be 
able  to  send  for  her ;  all  through  the  fall  she  had  been 
dreaming  of  the  arrangements  they  would  make  for  the 
winter.  But  by  now  it  had  become  clear  that  they  would 
have  to  be  separated  for  a  part  of  the  winter  as  well. 
She  had  sent  him  long  letters,  full  of  hopes  and  yearn 
ings,  anxieties  and  rebellions ;  but  in  the  end  she  had 
brought  herself  to  face  the  inevitable.  And  then  it 
transpired  that  even  a  greater  sacrifice  was  required 
of  her — she  was  to  be  forbidden  to  see  Thyrsis  at  all! 
If  a  man  did  not  support  his  wife,  said  the  world,  it 
was  common-sense  that  he  should  not  have  any  wife ; 
that  was  the  quickest  way  to  bring  him  to  his  senses. 
And  so  the  two  had  threshed  out  that  problem,  and 
chosen  their  course ;  they  would  live  in  the  same  city,  and 
yet  confine  themselves  to  writing  letters ! 

A  curious  feeling  it  gave  Thyrsis,  to  know  that  she 
was  so  near  to  him,  and  yet  not  to  be  going  to  meet 
her !  He  could  not  endure  any  part  of  the  city  where 
he  had  been  with  her,  and  got  himself  a  hall  bedroom  on 
the  edge  of  a  tenement-district  far  up  town.  Then  he 
had  his  shoes  shined,  and  purchased  a  clean  collar,  and 
wrote  Miss  Ethelynda  Lewis  that  he  was  ready  to  call. 
While  he  was  waiting  to  hear  from  her,  there  came  to 
him  a  strange  adventure ;  assuredly  one  of  the  strangest 
that  ever  befell  a  struggling  poet,  in  a  world  where 
many  strange  adventures  have  befallen  struggling 
poets. 

For  six  months  Thyrsis  had  not  seen  his  baby ;  and 
361 


362  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

there  had  come  in  the  meantime  so  many  letters,  telling 
so  many  miraculous  things  about  that  baby !  So  many 
dreams  he  had  dreamed  about  it,  so  many  hopes  and  so 
many  prayers  were  centered  in  it !  Twenty-two  hours 
had  he  sat  by  the  bedside  when  it  was  born  ;  and  through 
all  the  trials  that  had  come  afterwards,  how  he  had 
suffered  and  wept  for  it !  Now  his  heart  was  wrung 
with  longing  to  see  it,  to  touch  it — his  child.  He 
wrote  Corydon  that  he  could  not  stand  it ;  and  Corydon 
wrote  back  that  he  was  right — he  should  surely  see  the 
baby.  And  so  it  was  arranged  between  them  that 
Thyrsis  was  to  be  at  a  certain  place  in  the  park,  and 
she  would  send  the  nurse-girl  there  with  little  Cedric. 

He  went  and  sat  upon  a  bench;  and  the  hour  came, 
and  at  last  down  the  path  strolled  a  nurse-girl,  wheel 
ing  a  baby-carriage.  He  looked  at  the  girl — yes,  she 
was  Irish,  as  Corydon  had  said,  and  answered  all  specifi 
cations  ;  and  then  he  looked  at  the  baby,  and  his  heart 
sank  into  his  boots.  Oh,  such  a  baby!  With  red  hair 
and  a  pug-nose, plebeian  and  dull-looking — such  a  baby  ! 
Thyrsis  stared  at  the  maid  again — and  she  smiled  at 
him.  Then  she  passed  on,  and  he  sank  down  upon  a 
bench.  Great  God,  could  it  be  that  that  was  his  child? 
That  he  would  have  to  go  through  life  with  something 
so  ugly,  so  alien  to  him?  A  terror  seized  him.  It 
was  like  a  nightmare.  He  was  hardly  able  to  move. 

But  then  he  told  himself  it  could  not  be!  Corydon 
had  written  him  all  about  the  baby ;  it  was  beautiful, 
with  a  noble  head ;  everyone  loved  it.  But  then,  were 
not  mothers  notoriously  blind?  Had  there  ever  been 
a  mother  dissatisfied  with  her  child?  Or  a  father 
either,  for  that  matter?  Was  it  not  a  kind  of  treason 
for  him  to  be  so  disgusted  with  this  one — since  it  so 
<;learlv  must  be  his? 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          36S 

There  wa.s  none  other  in  sight ;  and  though  he  waited 
half  an  hour,  none  came.  At  last  he  could  stand  it 
no  more,  but  hurried  away  to  the  nearest  telegraph- 
office.  "Has  baby  red  hair?"  he  wrote.  "Did  he  come 
to  the  park?"  And  then  he  went  to  his  room  and 
waited,  and  soon  after  came  the  reply :  "Baby  has 
golden  hair.  Nurse  was  ill.  Could  not  come." 

Thyrsis  read  this,  and  then  shut  the  door  upon  the 
messenger-boy,  and  burst  into  wild,  hilarious  laughter. 
He  stood  there  with  his  arms  stretched  out,  invoking 
all  posterity  to  witness — "What  do  you  think  of  that? 
What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

And  a  full  hour  later  he  was  sitting  by  his  bedside, 
his  chin  supported  on  his  hands,  and  still  invoking 
posterity.  "Will  you  ever  know  what  I  went  through?" 
he  was  saying.  "Will  you  ever  realize  what  my  books 
have  cost?"  Then  he  smiled  grimly,  thinking  of  Vol 
taire's  cruel  epigram — that  "letters  addressed  to  pos 
terity  seldom  reach  their  destination!" 

§  2.  THYRSIS  received  a  reply  to  his  note,  and  went 
to  call  upon  Miss  Ethelynda  Lewis.  Miss  Lewis  dwelt 
in  a  luxurious  apartment-house  on  Riverside  Drive, 
where  a  colored  maid  showed  him  into  a  big  parlor,  full 
of  spindle-legged  gilt  furniture  upholstered  in  flowered 
silk.  Also  the  room  contained  an  ebony  grand  piano, 
and  a  bookcase,  in  which  he  had  time  to  notice  the  works 
of  Maupassant  and  Marie  Corelli. 

Then  Miss  Lewis  entered,  clad  in  a  morning-gown 
of  crimson  "liberty".  She  was  petite  and  exquisite, 
full  of  alluring  dimples — and  apparently  just  out  of  a 
perfumed  bath.  Thyrsis  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  chair 
and  gazed  at  her,  feeling  quite  out  of  his  element. 

She   placed    herself    on    the   flowered    silk    sofa    and 


364  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

talked.  "I  am  immensely  interested  in  that  play,'* 
she  said.  "It  is  quite  unique.  And  you  are  so  young,, 
too — why,  you  seem  just  a  boy.  Really,  you  know,  I 
think  you  must  be  a  genius  yourself." 

Thyrsis  murmured  something,  feeling  uncomfortable. 

"The  only  thing  is,"  Miss  Lewis  went  on,  "it  will  need 
a  lot  of  revision  to  make  it  practical." 

"In  what  part?"  he  asked. 

"The  love-story,  principally,"  said  the  other.  "You 
see,  in  that  respect,  you  have  simply  thrown  your 
chances  away." 

"I  don't  understand,"  said  he. 

"You  have  made  your  hero  act  so  queerly.  Everyone 
feels  that  he  is  in  love  with  Helena — you  meant  him  to 
be,  didn't  you?  And  yet  he  goes  away  from  her  and 
won't  see  her !  Everyone  will  be  disappointed  at  that 
— it's  impossible,  from  every  point  of  view.  You'll 
have  to  have  them  married  in  the  last  act." 

Thyrsis  gasped  for  breath. 

"You  see,"  continued  Miss  Lewis,  "I  am  to  play  the 
part  of  Helena,  and  I  am  to  be  the  star.  And  obvi 
ously,  it  would  never  do  for  me  to  be  rejected,  and  left 
all  up  in  the  air  like  that.  I  must  have  some  sort  of  a 
love-scene." 

"But" — protested  the  poet — "what  you  want  me  to 
change  is  what  my  play  is  about!" 

"How  do  you  mean  ?"  asked  the  other. 

"Why,  it's  a  new  kind  of  love,"  he  stammered — "a 
different  kind." 

"But,  people  don't  understand  that  kind  of  love." 

"But,  Miss  Lewis,  that's  why  I  wrote  my  play !  I 
want  to  make  them  understand." 

"But  you  can't  do  anything  like  that  on  the  stage," 
said  Miss  Lewis.  "The  public  won't  come  to  see  your 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          365 

play."  And  then  she  went  on  to  explain  to  him  the 
conditions  of  success  in  the  business  of  the  theatre. 

Thyrsis  listened,  with  a  clutch  as  of  ice  about  his 
heart.  "I  am  very  sorry,  Miss  Lewis,"  he  said,  at  last 
— "but  I  couldn't  possibly  do  what  you  ask." 

"Couldn't  do  it !"  cried  the  other,  amazed. 

"It  would  not  fit  into  my  idea  at  all." 

"But,  don't  you  want  to  get  your  play  produced?" 

"That's  just  it,  I  want  to  get  my  play  produced.  If 
I  did  what  you  want  me  to,  it  wouldn't  be  my  play. 
It  would  be  somebody  else's  play." 

And  there  he  stood.  The  actress  argued  with  him 
and  protested.  She  showed  him  what  a  great  chance  he 
had  here — one  that  came  to  a  new  and  unknown  writer 
but  once  in  a  lifetime.  Here  was  a  manager  ready  to 
give  him  a  good  contract,  and  to  put  his  play  on  at 
once  in  a  Broadway  theatre ;  and  here  was  a  public 
favorite  anxious  to  have  the  leading  role.  It  would  be 
everything  he  could  ask — it  would  be  fame  and  fortune 
at  one  stroke.  But  Thyrsis  only  shook  his  head — he 
could  not  do  it.  He  was  almost  sick  with  disappoint 
ment  ;  but  it  was  a  situation  in  which  there  was  no  use 
trying  to  compromise — he  simply  could  not  make  a 
"Jove-story"  out  of  "The  Genius". 

So  at  last  there  came  a  silence  between  them — there 
being  nothing  more  for  Miss  Lewis  to  say. 

"Then  I  suppose  you  won't  want  the  play,"  said 
Thyrsis,  faintly. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered,  with  vexation.  "I'll 
have  to  think  about  it  again,  and  talk  to  my  manager. 
I  had  not  counted  on  such  a  possibility  as  this." 

And  so  they  left  it,  and  Thyrsis  went  away.  The 
next  morning  he  received  a  letter  from  "Robertson 
Jones,  Inc.",  asking  him  to  call  at  once. 


866  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

§  3.  ROBERTSON  JONES,  the  great  "theatrical  pro 
ducer",  was  large  and  ponderous,  florid  of  face  and  firm 
in  manner — the  steam-roller  type  of  business-man.  And 
it  became  evident  at  once  that  he  had  invited  Thyrsis 
to  come  and  be  rolled. 

"Miss  Lewis  tells  me  you  can't  agree  about  the  play," 
said  he. 

"No,"  said  Thyrsis,  faintly. 

And  then  Mr.  Jones  began.  He  told  Thyrsis  what 
he  meant  to  do  with  this  play.  Miss  Lewis  was  one  of 
the  country's  future  "stars",  and  he  was  willing  to 
back  her  without  stint.  He  had  permitted  her  to  make 
her  own  choice  of  a  role,  and  she  should  have  her  way 
in  everything.  There  were  famous  playwrights  bidding 
for  a  chance  to  write  for  her ;  but  she  had  seen  fit  to 
choose  "The  Genius". 

"Personally,"  said  Mr.  Jones,  "I  don't  believe  in  the 
play.  I  would  never  think  of  producing  it — it's  not 
the  sort  of  thing  anybody  is  interested  in.  But  Miss 
Lewis  likes  it;  she's  been  reading  Ibsenr  and  she  wants 
to  do  a  'drama  of  ideas',  and  all  that  -sort  of  thing, 
you  know.  And  that's  all  right — she's  the  sort  to  make 
a  success  of  whatever  she  does.  But  you  must  do  your 
share,  and  give  her  a  part  she  can  make  something  out 
of — some  chance  to  show  her  charm.  Otherwise,  of 
course,  the  thing's  impossible." 

Mr.  Jones  paused.  "I'm  very  sorry" — began  Thyr 
sis,  weakly. 

"What's  your  idea  in  refusing?"  interrupted  the 
other. 

Thyrsis  tried  to  explain — that  he  had  written  the 
play  to  set  forth  a  certain  thesis,  and  that  he  was 
asked  to  make  changes  that  directly  contradicted  this 
thesis. 


THE    END   OF   THE    TETHER          367 

"Have  you  ever  had  a  play  produced?"  demanded 
the  manager  abruptly. 

"No,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"Have  you  written  any  other  plays?" 

"No."   " 

"Your  first  trial!  Well,  don't  you  think  it  a  good 
deal  to  expect  that  your  play  should  be  perfect?" 

"I  don't  think" — began  Thyrsis. 

"Can't  you  see,"  persisted  the  other,  "that  people 
who  have  been  in  this  business  all  their  lives,  and  have 
watched  thousands  of  plays  succeed  and  fail,  might  be 
able  to  give  you  some  points  on  the  matter?" — And 
then  Mr.  Jones  went  on  to  set  forth  to  Thyrsis  the 
laws  of  the  theatrical  game — a  game  in  which  there 
was  the  keenest  competition,  and  in  which  the  "ante" 
was  enormously  high.  To  produce  "The  Genius"  would 
cost  ten  thousand  dollars  at  the  least ;  and  were  those 
who  staked  this  to  have  no  say  whatever  in  the  shaping 
of  the  play?  Manifestly  this  was  absurd;  and  as  the 
manager  pressed  home  the  argument,  Thyrsis  felt  as 
if  he  wanted  to  get  up  and  run!  When  Mr.  Jones 
talked  to  you,  he  looked  you  squarely  in  the  eye,  and 
you  had  a  feeling  of  presumption,  even  of  guilt,  in 
standing  out  against  him.  Thyrsis  shrunk  in  terror 
from  that  type  of  personality — he  would  let  it  have 
anything  in  the  world  it  wanted,  so  only  it  would  not 
clash  with  him.  But  never  before  had  it  demanded  one 
of  the  children  of  his  dreams ! 

Mr.  Jones  went  on  to  tell  how  many  things  he  would 
do  for  the  play.  It  would  go  into  rehearsal  at  once, 
and  would  be  seen  on  Broadway  by  the  first  of  Feb 
ruary.  They  would  pay  him  four,  six  and  eight  per 
cent.,  and  his  profits  could  not  be  less  than  three  hun 
dred  dollars  a  week.  With  Ethelynda  Lewis  in  the 


368  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

leading  role  the  play  might  well  run  until  June — and 
there  would  be  the  road  profits  the  next  season,  in  addi 
tion. 

Thyrsis'  brain  reeled  as  he  listened  to  this ;  it  was  in 
all  respects  identical  with  another  famous  temptation 
— "The  devil  taketh  him  upon  a  high  mountain,  and 
showeth  him  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth !" 

"And  then  there  is  England" — the  man  was  saying. 

"No,  no!"  cried  Thyrsis,  wildly.     "No!" 

"But  why  not?"  demanded  the  other. 

"It's  impossible!     I  couldn't  do  it!" 

"You  mean  you  couldn't  do  the  writing?" 

"I  wouldn't  know  how  to !" 

"Well  then,  that's  easily  arranged.  Let  me  get  some 
one  to  collaborate  with  you.  There's  Richard  Haber- 
ton — you  know  who  he  is  ?" 

"No,"  said  Thyrsis,  faintly. 

"He's  the  author  of  'The  Rajah's  Diamond' — it's 
playing  with  five  companions  now,  and  its  third  season. 
And  he  dramatized  'In  Honor's  Cause' — you've  seen 
that,  no  doubt.  We  have  paid  him  some  sixty  thousand 
dollars  in  royalties  so  far.  And  he'll  take  the  play  and 
fix  it  over — you  wouldn't  have  to  stir  a  finger." 

Thyrsis  sprang  up  in  his  agitation.  "Please  don't 
ask  me,  Mr.  Jones,"  he  cried.  "I  simply  could  not  do 
it!" 

It  seemed  strange  to  Thyrsis,  when  he  thought  it 
over  afterwards,  that  the  great  Robertson  Jones  should 
have  taken  the  trouble  to  argue  so  long  with  the  un 
known  author  of  a  play  in  which  he  did  not  believe. 
Was  it  that  opposition  incited  him  to  persist?  Or  had 
he  told  Ethelynda  Lewis  he  would  get  her  what  she 
wanted,  and  was  now  reluctant  to  confess  defeat?  At 
any  rate,  so  it  was — he  went  on  to  drive  Thyrsis  into 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          369 

a  corner,  to  tear  open  his  very  soul.  Also,  he  mani 
fested  anger ;  it  was  a  deliberate  affront  that  the  boy 
should  stand  out  like  this.  And  Thyrsis,  in  great  dis 
tress  of  soul,  explained  that  he  did  not  mean  it  that 
way — he  apologized  abjectly  for  his  obstinacy.  It  was 
the  ideas  that  he  had  tried  to  put  into  his  play,  and 
that  he  could  not  give  up ! 

"But,"  persisted  the  manager — "write  other  plays, 
and  put  your  ideas  into  them.  If  you've  once  had  a 
Broadway  success,  then  you  can  write  anything  you 
please,  and  you  can  make  your  own  terms  for  pro 
duction." 

That  thought  had  already  occurred  to  Thyrsis ;  it 
was  the  one  that  nearly  broke  down  his  resistance.  He 
would  probably  have  surrendered,  had  the  play  not 
been  so  fresh  from  his  mind,  and  so  dear  to  him ;  if  he 
had  had  time  enough  to  become  dissatisfied  with  it,  as 
he  had  with  his  first  novel — or  discouraged  about  its 
prospects,  as  he  had  with  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" ! 
But  this  child  of  his  fancy  was  not  yet  weaned ;  and  to 
tear  it  from  his  breast,  and  hand  it  to  the  butcher — 
no,  it  could  not  be  thought  of! 

§  4.  So  he  parted  from  Mr.  Jones,  and  went  home, 
to  pass  two  of  the  most  miserable  days  of  his  life. 
He  had  pronounced  his  "Apage,  Satanas!" — he  had 
turned  his  back  upon  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  And 
so  presumably — virtue  being  its  own  reward — he  should 
have  been  in  a  state  of  utter  bliss.  But  Thyrsis  had 
gone  deeper  into  that  problem,  and  asked  himself  a 
revolutionary  question:  Why  should  it  always  be  that 
Satan  had  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  at  his  bestowal? 
Thyrsis  did  not  want  any  kingdoms — he  only  wanted 
a  chance  to  live  in  the  country  with  his  wife  and  child. 


370  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  why,  in  order  to  get  these  things,  must  a  poet 
submit  himself  to  Satan? 

Then  came  the  third  morning  after  his  interview; 
and  Thyrsis  found  in  his  mail  another  letter  from 
Robertson  Jones,  Inc.  It  was  a  letter  brief  and  to  the 
point,  and  it  struck  him  like  a  thunderbolt. 

"Miss  Ethelynda  Lewis  has  decided  that  she  wishes 
to  accept  your  play  as  it  stands.  I  enclose  herewith 
a  contract  in  duplicate,  and  if  the  terms  are  acceptable 
to  you,  will  you  kindly  return  one  copy  signed,  and  re 
tain  the  other  yourself." 

Thyrsis  read,  not  long  after  that,  of  a  young  play 
wright  who  died  of  heart-failure;  and  he  was  not  sur 
prised — if  all  playwrights  had  to  go  through  experi 
ences  such  as  that.  He  could  hardly  believe  his  eyes, 
and  he  read  the  letter  over  two  or  three  times ;  he  read 
the  contract,  with  Mr.  Jones'  impressive  signature  at 
the  bottom.  He  did  not  know  anything  about  theatrical 
contracts,  but  this  one  seemed  fair  to  him.  It  provided 
for  a  royalty  upon  the  gross  receipts,  to  be  paid  after 
the  play  had  earned  the  expenses  of  its  production. 
Thyrsis  had  hoped  that  he  might  get  some  cash  in  ad 
vance,  but  that  was  not  mentioned.  In  the  flush  of 
his  delight  he  concluded  that  he  would  not  take  the 
risk  of  demanding  anything  additional,  but  signed  the 
contract  and  mailed  it,  and  sent  a  telegram  to  acquaint 
Corydon  with  the  glorious  tidings. 

§  5.  ONE  of  the  consequences  of  this  triumph  was 
that  Thyrsis  purchased  a  new  necktie  and  half  a  dozen 
collars ;  and  another  was  that  an  angry  world  was  in 
some  part  appeased,  and  permitted  the  struggling  poet 
to  see  his  wife  and  child  once  more. 

They  met  in  the  park;  and  strange  it  was  to  him  to 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          371 

see  Corydon  after  six  months'  absence.  She  was  beauti 
ful  as  ever,  somewhat  paler,  though  still  with  the  halo 
of  motherhood  about  her.  He  could  scarcely  realize 
that  she  was  his ;  she  seemed  like  a  dream  to  him — like 
some  phantom  of  music,  thrilling  and  wonderful,  yet 
frail  and  unsubstantial.  She  clung  to  his  arm,  trem 
bling  with  delight,  and  pouring  out  her  longing  and 
her  grief.  There  came  to  them  one  of  those  golden 
hours,  when  the  deeps  of  their  souls  welled  up,  and  they 
pledged  themselves  anew  to  their  faith. 

Even  stranger  it  was  to  see  the  child;  to  be  able  to 
look  at  him  all  he  pleased,  and  to  speak  to  him,  and  to 
hold  him  in  his  arms !  He  was  as  beautiful  as  Thyrsis 
could  have  wished,  and  the  father  had  no  trouble  at  all 
in  being  interested  in  him;  his  smiles  were  things  to 
make  the  angels  jealous.  Thyrsis  would  push  his  car 
riage  out  into  the  park,  and  they  would  sit  upon  a  bench 
and  gaze  at  him — each  making  sure  that  the  other  had 
missed  none  of  his  fine  points. 

He  was  beginning  to  make  sounds  now,  and  had 
achieved  the  word  "puss-ee".  This  originally  had  sig 
nified  the  woolly  kitten  he  carried  with  him,  but  now 
by  a  metonymy  it  had  come  to  include  all  kinds  of 
living  things ;  and  great  was  the  delight  of  the  parents 
when  a  big  red  automobile  flashed  past,  and  the  baby 
pointed  his  finger,  exclaiming  gleefully,  "Puss-ee!"  It 
is  an  astonishing  thing,  how  little  it  takes  to  make 
parents  happy ;  regarded  purely  as  an  abstract  propo 
sition,  it  would  be  difficult  to  explain  why  two  people 
who  possessed  between  them  a  total  of  sixty-four  teeth, 
more  or  less,  should  have  been  so  much  excited  by  the 
discovery  that  the  baby  had  four. 

But  parenthood,  as  Thyrsis  found,  meant  more  than 
charming  baby-prattle  and  the  counting  of  teeth.  Little 


372  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Cedric's  tiny  fingers  were  twisted  in  his  heart-strings 
— he  loved  him  with  a  love  the  intensity  of  which  fright 
ened  him  when  he  realized  it.  And  sometimes  things 
went  wrong,  and  then  with  a  pang  as  from  the  stab 
of  a  knife  would  come  the  thought  that  he  might  some 
day  lose  this  child.  So  much  pain  and  toil  a  child 
cost,  so  much  it  took  of  one's  strength  and  power; 
and  then,  such  a  fragile  thing  it  was — exposed  to  so 
many  perils  and  uncertainties,  to  the  ravages  of  so 
many  diseases,  that  struck  like  a  cruel  enemy  in  the 
dark!  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  were  so  ignorant — they 
were  like  children  themselves ;  and  where  should  they 
turn  for  knowledge?  There  were  doctors,  of  course; 
but  this  took  so  much  money — and  even  with  all  the 
doctors,  see  how  many  babies  died ! 

Thyrsis  was  learning  the  bitter  truth  of  Bacon's 
saying  about  "giving  hostages  to  fortune."  And 
dearly  as  he  loved  the  child,  the  artist  in  him  cried  out 
against  these  ties.  Where  now  was  that  care-free  out 
look,  that  recklessness,  that  joy  in  life  as  a  spectacle, 
which  made  up  so  much  of  the  artist's  attitude?  When 
one  had  a  wife  and  child  one  no  longer  enjoyed  tragedies 
— one  lived,  them ;  and  one  got  from  them,  not  katharsis, 
but  exhaustion.  One  became  timid  and  cautious  and 
didactic,  and.  other  inartistic  things.  One  learned  that 
life  was  real,  life  was  earnest,  and  the  grave  was  not 
its  goal! 

Cedric  had  been  weaned ;  but  still  he  was  not  growing 
properly.  Could  it  be  that  there  was  something  wrong 
with  what  they  fed  him?  Corydon  would  come  upon  ad 
vertisements  telling  of  wonderful  newly-discovered  foods 
for  infants,  and  giving  pictures  of  the  rosy  and  stal 
wart  ones  who  were  fed  upon  these  foods.  She  would 
take  to  buying  them — and  they  were  not  cheap  foods 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER  373 

either.  Then,  during  the  winter,  the  child  caught  cold ; 
and  they  took  that  to  mean  that  it  had  been  in  some 
way  exposed — that  was  what  everybody  said,  and  what 
the  name  "cold"  itself  suggested.  So  Corydon  would 
add  more  flannel  dresses  and  blankets,  until  the  unfor 
tunate  mite  of  life  would  be  in  a  purple  stew.  And  still, 
apparently,  these  mysterious  "colds"  were  not  to  be 
thwarted.  Thyrsis  felt  that  in  all  this  there  must  be 
something  radically  wrong,  and  yet  he  knew  not  what 
to  do.  Surely  it  should  .not  have  been  such  a  task  to 
keep  life  in  one  human  infant. 

Then,  too,  the  training  of  the  baby  was  going  badly. 
He  lived  in  close  contact  with  nervous  people  who  were 
disturbed  if  he  cried;  and  so  Corydon's  energies  were 
given  to  a  terrified  effort  to  keep  him  from  crying.  He 
must  be  dandled  and  rocked  to  sleep,  he  must  be  played 
with  and  amused,  and  have  everything  he  cried  for ; 
and  it  was  amazing  how  early  in  life  this  little  creature 
learned  fhe  hold  which  he  had  upon  his  mother.  His 
chief  want  had  come  to  be  to  sleep  all  day  and  lie  awake 
half  the  night ;  and  during  these  hours  of  wakef  ulness 
he  pursued  the  delightful  pastime  of  holding  some 
one's  hand  and  playing  with  it.  Corydon,  nervous  and 
sick  and  wrestling  with  melancholia,  would  have  to  lie 
awake  for  uncounted  hours  and  submit  to  this  torment. 
The  infant  had  invented  a  name  for  the  diversion;  he 
called  it  "Hoodaloo  mungie" — which  being  translated 
signified  "Hold  your  finger".  To  the  mother  this  was 
like  the  pass-word  of  some  secret  order  of  demons,  who 
preyed  upon  and  racked  her  in  the  night ;  so  that  never 
after  in  her  life  could  she  hear  the  phrase,  even  in  jest, 
without  experiencing  a  nervous  shock. 

§  6.      THIS  was   a   period  of   great   hopefulness   for 


374  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis,  but  also  of  desperate  struggle.  For  until 
the  production  of  his  play  in  January,  he  had  somehow 
to  keep  alive,  and  that  meant  more  hack-work.  Also 
he  had  to  lay  something  by,  for  after  the  rehearsals  the 
play  would  go  on  the  road  for  a  couple  of  weeks,  to  be 
"tried  on  the  dog" ;  and  during  that  period  he  must 
have  money  enough  to  travel,  and  stay  at  hotels,  and 
also  to  take  Corydon  with  him,  if  possible. 

The  rehearsals  began  an  interesting  experience  for 
him ;  he  was  introduced  into  a  new  and  strange  world. 
Thyrsis  himself  was  shy,  and  disposed  to  run  away 
and  hide  his  emotions ;  but  here  were  people — the  actor- 
folk — whose  business  it  was  to  live  them  in  sight  of  the 
world.  And  these  emotions  were  their  life;  they  were 
very  intense,  yet  quick  both  to  come  and  to  go.  Such 
people  were  intensely  personal;  they  were  like  great 
children,  vain  and  sensitive,  their  moods  and  excitements 
not  to  be  taken  too  seriously.  But  it  was  long  before 
Thyrsis  came  to  realize  this,  and  meanwhile  he  had 
some  uncomfortable  times.  To  each  of  the  players, 
apparently,  the  interest  of  a  play  centered  in  those 
places  in  which  he  was  engaged  in  speaking  his  lines ; 
and  to  each  the  author  of  the  play  was  a  more  or  less 
benevolent  despot,  who  had  the  happiness  of  the  rest  of 
the  world  in  his  keeping.  Once  at  a  rehearsal,  when 
Thyrsis  was  engaged  in  cutting  out  one  of  the  speeches 
attributed  to  "Mrs.  Hartman",  he  discovered  that  lady 
standing  behind  him  in  a  flood  of  tears! 

In  the  beginning  Thyrsis  paid  many  visits  to  the 
apartment  on  Riverside  Drive ;  for  Miss  Lewis  professed 
to  be  very  anxious  that  he  should  consult  with  her  and 
tell  her  his  ideas  of  her  part.  But  Thyrsis  soon  dis 
covered  that  what  she  really  wanted  was  to  have  him 
listen  to  her  ideas.  Miss  Lewis  was  at  war  with  Thyrsis' 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          375 

portrayal  of  Helena — it  was  incomprehensible  to  her 
that  Lloyd  should  not  be  pursuing  her,  and  she  playing 
the  coquette,  according  to  all  romantic  models.  Par 
ticularly  she  could  not  see  how  Lloyd  was  to  resist  the 
particularly  charming  Helena  which  she  was  going  to 
make.  She  was  always  trying  to  make  Thyrsis  realize 
this  incongruity,  and  to  persuade  him  to  put  some 
"charming"  lines  into  her  part.  "You  boy !"  she  would 
exclaim.  "I  believe  you  are  as  obstinate  as  your  hero !" 
Miss  Lewis  was  only  two  years  older  than  the  "boy", 
but  she  saw  fit  to  adopt  this  grandmotherly  attitude 
toward  him. 

And  then  came  Robertson  Jones,  suggesting  a  man 
who  could  play  the  part  of  Lloyd.  But  Miss  Lewis 
declared  indignantly  that  she  would  not  have  him,  be 
cause  he  was  not  handsome  enough.  "If,"  she  vowed, 
"I've  got  to  make  love  to  a  man  and  be  rejected  by  him, 
at  least  I'm  not  going  to  have  it  an  ugly  man !"  When 
an  actor  was  finally  agreed  upon  and  engaged,  Thyrsis 
Jhad  a  talk  with  him,  and  it  seemed  as  if  Miss  Lewis, 
in  her  preoccupation  with  his  looks,  had  overlooked  the 
matter  of  his  brains.  But  Thyrsis  was  so  new  at  this 
game  that  he  did  not  feel  capable  of  judging.  He 
shrunk  from  the  thought  of  having  any  actor  play 
his  part — that  was  so  precious  and  so  full  of  meaning 
to  him. 

But  when  the  rehearsals  began,  Thyrsis  speedily  for 
got  this  feeling.  The  most  sensitive  poet  to  the  con 
trary  notwithstanding,  the  purpose  of  a  play  is  to  be 
acted ;  and  Thyrsis  was  like  an  inventor,  who  has 
dreamed  a  great  machine,  and  now  sees  the  parts  of  it 
appearing  as  solid  steel  and  brass ;  sees  them  put  to 
gether,  and  the  great  device  getting  actually  under  way. 

The  rehearsals  were  held  in  a  little  hall  on  the  East 


376  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Side,  and  thither  came  the  company — six  men  and  three 
women.  There  was  no  furniture  or  setting,  they  all 
wore  their  street  clothing,  and  in  the  beginning  they 
went  through  their  parts  with  the  manuscript  in  their 
hands.  And  yet — they  had  been  selected  because  they 
resembled  the  characters  in  the  play ;  and  every  time 
they  went  over  the  lines  they  gave  them  with  more  feel 
ing  and  understanding.  So — vaguely  at  first,  and  then 
more  clearly — the  poet  began  to  see  them  as  incarna 
tions  of  his  vision.  These  characters  had  been  creatures 
of  his  fancy ;  they  had  lived  in  it,  he  had  walked  and 
talked  and  laughed  and  wept  with  them.  Now  to  dis 
cover  them  outside  him — to  be  able  to  hear  them  with 
his  physical  ears  and  see  them  with  his  physical  eyes — 
was  one  of  the  strangest  experiences  of  his  life.  It  was 
so  thrilling  as  to  be  almost  uncanny.  It  was  a  new  kind 
of  inspiration,  of  that  strange  "subliminal  uprush" 
which  made  the  mystery  of  his  life.  And  it  was  a  kind 
that  others  could  experience  with  him.  Corydon  would 
come  every  day  to  the  rehearsals,  and  for  four  or  five 
hours  at  a  stretch  they  would  sit  and  watch  and  listen 
in  a  state  of  perfect  transport. 

§  7.  ALSO,  there  were  things  not  in  the  manuscript 
which  were  sources  of  interest  and  delight.  There  was 
Mr.  Tapping,  the  stage  director,  for  instance ;  Thyrsis 
could  see  himself  writing  another  play,  just  to  get  Mr. 
Tapping  in.  He  was  a  man  well  on  in  years,  and 
wrecked  by  dissipation — almost  bald  and  toothless,  and 
with  one  foot  crippled  with  gout.  Yet  he  was  a  perfect 
geyser  of  activity — bounding  about  the  stage,  talking 
swiftly,  gesticulating — like  some  strange  gnome  or  co- 
bold  out  of  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  Thyrsis  was  the 
creator  of  the  play,  so  far  as  concerned  the  words ;  but 


THE    END   OF   THE    TETHER  377 

this  man  was  to  be  the  creator  of  it  on  the  stage.     And 
that,  too,  required  a  kind  of  genius,  Thyrsis  perceived. 

Mr.  Tapping  had  talked  the  problems  out  with  him 
at  the  beginning— talking  until  two  o'clock  in  the  morn 
ing,  in  a  super-heated  office  filled  with  the  smoke  of  ten 
thousand  dead  cigars.  He  talked  swiftly,  eagerly,  set 
ting  forth  his  ideas;  to  Thyrsis  it  was  a  most  curious 
experience — to  hear  the  vision  of  his  inmost  soul  trans 
lated  into  the  language  of  the  Tenderloin !  "Your  fid 
dler's  this  kind  of  a  guy,"  Mr.  Tapping  would  say — 
"he  knows  he's  got  the  goods,  and  he  don't  care  whether 
those  old  fogies  think  he's  dippy,  or  what  the  hell  they 
think.  Ain't  that  the  dope,  Mr.  Author?"  And  Thyr 
sis  would  answer  faintly  that  he  thought  that  was  "the 
dope." — This  was  a  word  that  Mr.  Tapping  used  every 
time  he  opened  his  mouth,  apparently ;  it  designated  all 
things  connected  with  the  play — character,  dialogue, 
action,  scenery,  music,  costume,  "That's  the  way  to 
dope  it  out  to  them !"  he  would  cry  to  the  actors. 

Miss  Lewis,  and  Mr.  Tilford,  the  leading  man,  moved 
through  their  parts  with  dignity ;  the  stage  director 
showed  them  the  "business"  he  had  laid  out,  but  they 
did  not  trouble  to  act  at  rehearsals,  and  he  did  not 
criticize  what  they  did.  But  all  the  other  people  had 
to  be  taught  their  roles  and  drilled  in  them ;  and  that 
meant  that  Mr.  Tapping  had  to  have  in  him  five  actors 
and  two  actresses,  and  play  all  their  seven  parts  as  they 
came.  Marvellous  it  was  to  see  him  do  this ;  springing 
from  place  to  place,  and  changing  his  whole  aspect  in  a 
flash — now  scolding  shrewishly  in  the  words  of  Violet 
Hartman,  now  discoursing,  with  the  accent  and  man 
ner  of  Prof,  von  Arne,  upon  the  psychopathia  sexualis 
of  Genius. 

He  did  not  know  all  the  parts,  of  course;  but  that 


378  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

was  never  allowed  to  trouble  him.  He  would  take  a 
sentence  out  of  the  actor's  lips,  and  then  go  on  to  elab 
orate  it  in  his  Tenderloin  dialect;  or,  if  the  scene  was 
highly  emotional,  and  required  swift  speech,  he  would 
fall  back  upon  the  phrase  "and  so  and  so,  and  so  and 
so."  He  could  run  the  whole  gamut  of  human  emo 
tions  with  those  words,  "and  so  and  so." 

"No,  that's  no  good !"  he  would  cry  to  "Mrs.  Hart- 
man."  "What  are  those  words? — 'Wretched,  ungrate 
ful  son — do  you  care  nothing  at  all  for  your  parents' 
feelings?  Do  you  owe  us  nothing  for  what  we  have 
done?  And  so  and  so?  And  so  and  so?  And  so  and 
so?''  Mr.  Tapping's  voice  would  rise  to  a  wail;  and 
then  in  a  flash  he  would  turn  to  Moses  Rosen  (he  called 
all  the  actors  by  their  character-names).  "That's 
your  cue,  Rosen,  you  rush  in  left  Centre,  and  throw  up 
your  hands — right  here — see?  And  what's  your  dope? 
— oh  yes — 'I  have  spent  seven  thousand  dollars  on  this 
thing!  You  have  ruined  me!  You  have  betrayed  me! 
And  so  and  so !  And  so  and  so !  And  so  and  so !' — 
And  then  you  run  over  here  to  the  professor — 'You 
have  trapped  me !  And  so  and  so !'  ' 

Day  by  day  as  the  work  progressed,  and  the  actors 
came  to  know  their  lines,  Thyrsis'  excitement  grew. 
The  great  machine  was  running,  he  was  getting  some 
sense  of  the  power  of  it !  And  new  aspects  of  it  were 
revealed  to  him ;  there  came  the  composer  who  was  to 
do  the  incidental  music,  and  the  orchestra-leader  who 
was  to  conduct  it ;  there  came  the  costume-designer  and 
the  scene-painter,  and  even  the  press-agent  who  was  to 
"boost"  the  play,  and  wanted  picturesque  details  about 
the  author's  life.  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  were  invited  to 
go  with  Mr.  Tilford  to  select  a  wig,  and  with  Mr.  Tap 
ping  to  see  the  carpenters  who  were  building  the  vari- 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          379 

ous  "sets",  in  a  big  loft  over  near  the  North  River.  As 
the  two  walked  home  each  day  after  these  adventures, 
it  was  all  they  could  do  to  keep  from  hugging  each 
other  on  the  street. 

It  was  a  thing  of  especial  moment  to  Thyrsis,  be 
cause  it  was  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  his  art  had 
received  any  assistance  from  the  outside  world — the 
first  time  this  world  had  done  anything  but  scold  at  him 
and  mock  him.  Here  at  last  was  recognition — here  was 
success !  Here  were  material  things  submitting  them 
selves  to  his  vision,  coming  to  him  humbly  to  be  taught, 
and  to  co-operate  in  the  creation  of  beauty  !  So  Thyrsis 
caught  sudden  glimpses  of  what  his  life  might  have 
been.  He  was  like  a  man  who  had  been  chained  in  a 
black  dungeon,  and  who  now  gets  sight  of  the  green 
earth  and  the  blue  sky,  and  smells  the  perfume  of  the 
flowers  and  hears  the  singing  of  the  birds.  With  forces 
such  as  this  at  his  command,  the  power  of  his  vision 
would  be  multiplied  tenfold ;  and  he  was  transported 
with  the  delight  of  the  discovery,  he  and  Corydon  found 
their  souls  once  more  in  this  new  hope. 

So  out  of  these  moods  there  began  the  burgeoning  of 
new  plans  in  his  mind.  Even  amid  the  rush  of  re 
hearsals,  he  was  dreaming  of  other  things  to  write; 
some  time  before  "The  Genius"  had  reached  the  public, 
he  had  finished  the  writing  of  "The  Utopians" — that 
fragment  of  a  vision  which  was  perhaps  the  greatest 
thing  he  ever  did,  and  certainly  the  most  characteristic. 

§  8.  As  usual,  the  immediate  occasion  of  the  writing 
was  trivial  enough.  It  was  his  "leading  lady"  who 
was  responsible  for  it.  Miss  Lewis  had  taken  a  curious 
fancy  to  Thyrsis — he  was  a  new  type  to  her,  and  it 
pleased  her  to  explore  him.  "How  in  the  world 


380  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

did  you  ever  get  him  to  marry  you?"  she  would  exclaim 
to  Cory  don.  "I  could  as  soon  imagine  a  marble  statue 
making  love  to  me !"  And  she  told  others  about  this 
strange  poet,  who  was  obviously  almost  starving,  and 
yet  had  refused  to  let  Richard  Haberton  revise  his  play 
for  him,  and  had  all  but  refused  to  let  Robertson  Jones, 
Inc.,  produce  it.  Before  long  she  came  to  Thyrsis  to 
say  that  one  of  her  friends  desired  to  meet  him,  and 
would  he  come  to  a  supper-party. 

Thyrsis  heard  this  with  perplexity. 

"A  supper-party  !"  he  exclaimed.     "But  I  can't  P 

"Why  not?" 

"Why— I  have  no  clothes." 

"Nobody  expects  a  poet  to  have  clothes,"  laughed 
Miss  Lewis.  "Come  in  the  garments  of  your  fancy. 
And  besides,  Barry's  a  true  Bohemian." 

Barry  Creston,  the  giver  of  this  party,  was  one  of 
the  sons  of  "Dan"  Creston,  the  mine-owner  and  "rail 
road-king",  who  a  short  while  before  had  been  elected 
senator  from  a  Western  state  under  circumstances  of 
great  scandal.  "The  old  man's  a  hard  character,  I 
guess,"  said  Miss  Lewis ;  "but  you  must  not  believe  all 
you  read  in  the  papers  about  Barry." 

"I  never  read  anything  about  him,"  said  the  other ; 
and  so  Miss  Lewis  went  on  to  explain  that  Griswold,  the 
Wall  Street  plunger,  had  got  a  divorce  from  his  wife 
after  throwing  her  into  Barry's  arms ;  and  that  Barry's 
sister  had  married  an  Austrian  arch-duke  who  had  mal 
treated  her,  and  that  Barry  had  kicked  him  out  of  a 
hotel-window  in  Paris. 

This  invitation  was  a  cause  of  much  discomfort  to 
Thyrsis.  He  had  not  come  to  the  point  where  he  was 
even  curious  about  the  life  of  the  Barry  Crestons  of 
the  world ;  and  yet  he  did  not  like  to  hurt  Miss  Lewis' 


THE    END    OF    THE    TETHER          381 

feelings.  She  made  it  evident  to  him  that  she  was  de 
termined  to  exhibit  her  "lion" ;  and  so  he  said  "all 
right." 

The  supper  party  was  at  the  Cafe  de  Boheme,  which 
was  an  Aladdin's  palace  buried  underground  beneath  a 
building  in  the  "Tenderloin".  Fountains  splashed  in 
marble  basins,  and  birds  sang  amid  the  branches  of 
tropical  flowering  trees,  while  on  a  little  stage  a  man  in 
the  costume  and  character  of  a  Paris  apache  sang  a 
song  of  ferocious  cynicism.  And  after  him  came  a 
Japanese  juggler  of  prodigious  swiftness,  and  then  a 
fat  German  woman  in  peasant  guise  who  sang  folk 
songs,  and  wound  up  with  "O,  du  lieber  Augustin !" 
After  which  the  company  joined  in  the  chorus  of  "Funi- 
culi,  funicula"  and  "Gaudeamus  igitur" — for  the 
patrons  of  the  "Boheme"  were  nothing  if  they  were  not 
cosmopolitan. 

Cosmopolitan  also  was  the  company  at  Barry  Cres- 
ton's  table.  On  one  side  of  Thyrsis  was  Miss  Lewis,  and 
on  the  other  was  Mile.  Armand,  the  dancer  who  had  set 
New  York  in  a  furore.  Opposite  to  her  was  Scarpi, 
the  famous  baritone;  and  then  there  was  Massey,  a 
sculptor  from  Paris,  and  Miss  Rita  Seton,  of  the  "Red 
Hussars"  Company,  and  a  Miss  Raymond,  a  gorgeous 
creature  with  a  red  flamingo  feather  in  her  hat,  who  had 
been  Massey's  model  for  his  sensational  figure  of 
"Aurora". 

Finally  there  was  Barry  Creston  himself :  a  new  type, 
and  a  disconcerting  one.  He  was  not  at  all  the  "gilded 
youth"  whom  Thyrsis  had  expected  to  find;  he  was  a- 
man  of  about  thirty,  widely  cultured,  urbane  and 
gracious  in  his  manner,  and  quite  evidently  a  man  of 
force.  He  was  altogether  free  from  that  crude  egotism 
which  Thyrsis  had  found  to  be  the  most  prominent 


382  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

characteristic  of  the  American  man  of  wealth.  He 
spoke  in  French  with  Armand  and  in  Italian  with 
Scarpi  and  in  German  with  the  head-waiter  who  wor 
shipped  before  him ;  and  yet  one  did  not  feel  that  there 
was  any  ostentation  about  it — all  this  was  his  monde. 
And  although  he  exhaled  an  atmosphere  of  vast  wealth, 
this,  too,  seemed  a  matter  of  course;  he  assumed  that 
you  also  were  provided  with  unlimited  funds — that  all 
the  world,  in  fact,  was  in  the  same  fortunate  case.  Evi 
dently  he  was  well-known  at  the  "Boheme",  for  the 
waiters  gathered  like  flies  around  the  honey-pot,  and 
the  august  head-waiter  himself  took  the  order,  and 
beamed  his  approval  at  Barry's  selections.  So  presently 
there  flowed  in  a  stream  of  costly  viands,  served  in 
outre  and  fantastic  fashion — many  of  them  things  not 
known  even  by  name  to  Thy r sis.  There  were  costly 
wines  as  well,  and  at  the  end  an  ice  in  the  shape  of  a 
great  basket  of  fruit,  wonderfully  carved  and  colored 
like  life,  resting  upon  a  slab  of  ice,  which  in  turn  was 
set  in  a  silver  tray  with  handles. 

Thyrsis  was  dazed  at  all  this  waste,  and  at  the  up 
roar  in  the  place,  where  dozens  of  other  parties  were 
squandering  money  in  the  same  blind  fashion,  and  all 
laughing,  chatting,  joining  in  the  choruses  with  the 
performers  on  the  stage.  Now  and  then  he  would  catch 
a  little  of  his  host's  conversation,  which  was  of  all  the 
capitals  of  Europe,  and  of  art-worlds,  the  very  exist 
ence  of  which  was  unknown  to  him.  And  then,  on  his 
left  hand,  there  was  Mile.  Armand,  deftly  picking  off 
•  the  leaves  of  an  artichoke  and  dipping  them  into  mayonr 
naise,  and  saying  in  her  little  bird's  voice,  "They  tell 
me,  Monsieur,  that  you  have  du  genie.  Oh,  you  should 
go  to  Paree  to  live — it  is  not  here  that  one  appreciates 
du  genie!"  And,  then  while  Thyrsis  was  working  out 


THE    END   OF   THE    TETHER          383 

an  explanation  of  his  failure  to  visit  Paris,  some  one 
in  the  cafe  caught  sight  of  Scarpi,  and  there  was  a 
general  call  for  him;  and  according  to  the  genial  cus 
tom  of  the  "Boheme"  he  stood  up,  amid  tumultuous  ap 
plause,  and  sang  one  of  his  own  rollicking  songs. 

So  the  revelry  went  forward,  while  Thyrsis  mar 
velled,  and  tried  to  hide  his  pain.  There  could  be  no 
question  of  any  enjoyment  for  him — when  he  knew  that 
the  cost  of  this  affair  would  have  paid  all  his  expenses 
for  a  winter !  Doubtless  what  Barry  Creston  spent  for 
his  cigars  would  have  saved  Thyrsis  and  his  family 
from  misery  all  their  lives ;  and  he  wondered  if  the 
man  would  have  cared  had  he  known.  Barry  was  one 
of  the  princes  of  the  new  dispensation;  and  sometimes 
princes  were  compassionate,  Thyrsis  reflected.  Ap 
parently  this  one  was  all  urbanity  and  charm,  having 
no  thought  in  life  save  to  play  the  perfect  host  to 
brilliant  artists  and  demi-mondaines,  and  to  skim  the 
cream  off  the  top  of  civilization. 

But  then  suddenly  the  conversation  took  a  new  turn, 
and  Thyrsis  got  another  view  of  the  young  prince. 
There  had  been  trouble  out  in  the  Western  mines ;  and 
some  one  mentioned  it — when  in  a  flash  Thyrsis  saw 
the  set  jaw  and  the  clenched  fist  and  the  steel  grey  eye 
of  old  "Dan"  Creston.  (Thyrsis  had  read  somewhere 
a  sketch  of  this  senator,  whose  fortune  was  estimated 
at  fifty  millions,  and  who  ran  the  governments  of  three 
states. )  Barry,  it  seemed,  had  had  charge  of  the  mines 
for  three  years — that  was  how  he  had  won  his  spurs. 
In  those  days,  he  said,  there  had  been  no  unions — he 
told  with  a  quiet  smile  how  he  had  broken  them.  Now 
again  "agitators"  had  crept  in,  so  that  in  some  of  the 
camps  the  men  were  being  moved  out  bodily,  and  re 
placed  by  foreigners,  who  knew  a  good  job  when  they 


384  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

had  it.  To  make  this  change  had  taken  the  militia ;  but 
it  would  be  done  thoroughly,  and  afterwards  there  would 
be  no  more  trouble. 

The  supper-party  broke  up  about  two  o'clock,  and 
Miss  Raymond,  the  lady  of  the  flamingo  hat,  was  the 
only  one  who  showed  any  effects  from  all  the  wine  that 
had  been  consumed.  Thyrsis,  to  his  great  surprise, 
discovered  that  his  host  had  taken  a  fancy  to  him,  and 
had  asked  Miss  Lewis  to  bring  him  out  to  luncheon  at 
the  Creston  place  in  the  country.  And  so  came  the 
wonderful  experience  which  brought  to  him  the  vision 
of  "The  Utopians." 

§  9.  THEY  went,  one  Saturday  morning,  in  Miss 
Lewis'  automobile — out  to  Riverside  Drive,  and  up  the 
valley  of  the  Hudson.  This  was  in  itself  a  utopian 
experience  for  Thyrsis,  who  had  never  before  taken  a 
trip  in  one  of  these  magic  chariots.  It  leaped  over 
the  frozen  roads  like  a  thing  of  life,  and  he  lay  back  in 
the  cushioned  seats  and  closed  his  eyes  and  listened  to 
the  hum  of  the  machinery,  imagining  what  life  might 
be  for  him,  if  he  could  rest  like  this  when  he  was  worn 
from  overwork.  It  was  like  some  great  adventure  in 
music,  like  a  minstrel's  chanting  of  heroic  deeds ;  it  was 
Nature  with  all  her  pageantry  unrolled  in  a  panorama 
before  his  eyes.  And  meantime  Miss  Lewis  was  chatter 
ing  on  about  the  play  and  its  prospects ;  and  about 
other  plays  and  their  prospects;  and  about  the  people 
at  the  supper-party  and  their  various  loves  and  hates. 

So  they  came  to  the  great  stone  castle  of  the  Cres- 
tons,  set  upon  a  mountain-top  overlooking  the  valley  of 
this  "American  Rhine."  Thyrsis  gasped  when  he  saw 
it,  and  he  gasped  many  times  again  while  Barry  was 
showing  them  about.  For  this  place  was  a  triumph  of 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          385 

a  hundred  arts  and  sciences ;  into  its  perfections  had 
gone  all  the  skill  of  the  architects  and  designers,  the 
weavers  and  carpenters,  the  painters  and  sculptors  of 
a  score  of  centuries  and  climes.  The  very  dairies,  the 
stables,  the  dog-kennels  were  things  to  be  wondered  at 
and  studied ;  and  in  the  vast  halls  were  single  pictures 
over  which  Thyrsis  would  fain  have  lingered  for  hours. 
Then,  best  of  all,  the  great  portico,  with  its  stone  pil 
lars,  and  its  view  of  the  noble  river,  and  of  the  snow- 
clad  hills,  dazzling  in  the  sunlight ! 

They  had  luncheon ;  after  which  Barry  played  upon 
the  organ,  and  Miss  Lewis  sat  beside  him  and  left 
Thyrsis  to  wander  at  will.  He  made  his  way  out  to  the 
portico,  and  paced  back  and  forth  there ;  and  while  the 
organ  rolled  and  thundered  to  him,  the  majesty  of  the 
scene  swept  over  him,  and  in  towering  splendors  his 
soul  arose.  He  thought  of  the  wretched  room  in  which 
he  was  pent,  he  thought  of  his  starved  and  strug 
gling  life ;  and  all  the  rage  of  his  defeated  genius  awoke 
in  him.  In  the  name  of  that  genius  he  uttered  his  de 
fiance,  and  by  the  title  of  it  he  took  possession  of  this 
castle,  and  of  all  things  it  contained.  Yes — for  he  was 
the  true  lord  and  master  of  it — he  was  the  prince  dis 
inherited  !  And  the  meaning  of  it,  its  excuse  for  being, 
was  this  brief  hour !  For  this  its  glories  had  been  as 
sembled  ;  for  this  the  architects  and  designers,  the 
weavers  and  carpenters,  the  painters  and  sculptors  had 
labored  in  a  score  of  centuries  and  climes ;  for  this  the 
great  organ  had  been  built,  and  for  this  the  great  musi 
cian  had  composed — that  he  might  behold,  in  one  hour 
of  transfiguration,  what  the  life  of  man  would  be  in 
that  glad  time  when  all  the  arts  of  civilization  were 
turned  to  the  fostering  of  the  soul !  When  he  who  car 
ried  in  the  womb  of  his  spirit  the  new  life  of  the  ages, 


386  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

would  be  loved  instead  of  being  hated,  would  be  cherished 
instead  of  being  neglected,  would  be  reverenced  instead 
of  being  mocked !  When  palaces  would  be  built  for  him. 
and  beauty  and  joy  would  be  gathered  for  him,  and  the 
paths  would  be  made  clear  before  his  feet!  So  out  of 
boundless  love  and  rapture  would  he  speak  to  men,  and 
bring  to  them  those  gifts  that  were  beyond  price,  the 
treasures  of  his  unfolding  inspiration. 

So  it  was  that  the  Utopians  came  to  Thyrsis ;  those 
men  of  the  future,  worshippers  of  joy!  They  came  to 
him,  alive  and  in  the  flesh,  beautiful  and  noble,  gracious 
and  free-hearted — as  some  day  they  will  come,  if  so  the 
earth  endure;  as  they  will  stand  upon  that  portico, 
and  listen  to  that  music,  and  gaze  upon  the  valley  of 
that  American  Rhine!  And  will  they  remember  the 
long-dead  dreamer,  and  how  they  walked  with  him  there 
and  spoke  with  him ;  how  they  put  their  arms  about  him, 
and  gave  him  of  their  love  and  understanding?  Will 
they  remember  what  shuddering  rapture  their  touch 
conveyed  to  him;  how  the  tears  ran  down  his  cheeks, 
and  he  pledged  his  soul  to  yet  more  years  of  torment, 
so  only  their  glory  might  come  to  be  upon  earth?  Will 
they  read  the  blazing  words  in  which  he  pictured  them, 
the  trumpet-blast  he  sounded  to  the  dead  souls  of  his 
time? 

Thyrsis  knew  that  this  was  the  greatest  hour  of  his 
life,  and  he  fought  like  mad  to  hold  it.  But  that  might 
not  be — the  music  ceased,  and  he  heard  the  voices  of 
his  host  and  Miss  Lewis.  They  came  to  the  door ;  and 
then  Thyrsis'  thoughts  came  back  quickly  to  earth. 
For  he  saw  that  Barry  Creston's  arm  was  about  the 
woman,  and  she  was  leaning  upon  him ;  nor  did  they 
separate  when  they  saw  him,  but  stood  there,  smiling; 
so  that  at  last  Thyrsis  had  solved  for  him  the  problem 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          38T 

of  their  relationship.  It  was  not  so  that  the  Utopians 
loved,  he  thought,  as  he  watched  them ;  and  found  him 
self  wondering  if  young  Creston  was  as  imperious  with 
his  women  as  he  was  with  the  slaves  in  his  Western 
mines. 

The  car  came  to  the  door,  and  they  parted  from  their 
host  and  sped  back  to  the  city.  "What  do  you  think 
of  him?"  asked  Miss  Lewis — and  went  on  in  a  burst  of 
confidence  to  tell  him  that  it  was  to  this  prince  of  the 
new  dispensation  that  he  owed  the  great  chance  of  his 
life.  For  it  was  Barry  Creston  who  had  given  the 
Broadway  "show-girl"  the  start  that  had  made  her  a 
popular  comedienne;  it  was  Barry  Creston  who  had 
awakened  in  her  an  interest  in  the  "drama  of  ideas", 
and  had  set  her  to  fermenting  with  new  ambitions ;  and 
finally  it  was  Barry  Creston  who  in  a  moment  of  in 
dulgence  had  promised  the  money  which  had  set  the 
managers  and  actors  and  musicians,  the  stage-carpen 
ters  and  scene-painters  and  press-agents  to  work  at  the 
task  of  embodying  "The  Genius"! 

§  10.  IT  may  have  been  a  coincidence;  but  from 
that  hour  dated  the  process  of  Thyrsis'  disillusionment 
concerning  the  production  of  his  play.  Could  it  be, 
he  asked  himself,  that  such  wealth  as  Barry  Creston's 
could  buy  true  art?  Could  it  be  that  forces  set  in 
motion  by  it  could  really  express  his  vision?  "Genius 
surrounded  by  Commercialism",  had  been  the  formula 
of  his  play;  and  did  not  the  formula  describe  his  own 
position  as  well  as  Lloyd's? 

A  strange  thing  was  this  theatrical  business — the 
business  of  selling  emotions !  One  had  really  to  feel  the 
emotions,  in  order  to  portray  them  with  force ;  yet  one 
had  at  the  same  time  to  appraise  them  with  the  eye  of 


388  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  business-man — one  must  not  feel  emotions  that  would 
not  pay.  Also,  one  boomed  and  boosted  his  own  par 
ticular  emotions,  celebrating  their  merits  in  the  lan 
guage  of  the  circus-poster.  If  you  had  taken  up  a  cer 
tain  play,  you  considered  it  the  greatest  play  that  had 
ever  made  its  bow  to  Broadway ;  and  you  actually  per 
suaded  yourself  to  believe  it — at  least  those  who  made 
the  real  successes  were  men  who  possessed  that  hyp 
notic  power. 

There  was,  for  instance,  Mr.  Rosenberg,  the  press- 
agent  and  advertising-man.  He  was  certain  that  "The 
Genius"  was  a  play  of  genius,  and  its  author  a  man  of 
genius ;  and  yet  Thyrsis  knew  that  if  it  had  been  Meyer 
and  Levinson,  across  the  street,  who  were  producing  it, 
Mr.  Rosenberg  would  have  called  it  "rot".  Mr.  Rosen 
berg  was  to  Thyrsis  a  living  embodiment  of  Moses 
Rosen  in  the  play — so  much  so  that  he  felt  the  re 
semblance  in  the  names  to  be  perilous,  and  winced  every 
time  he  heard  Rosenberg  speak  of  Rosen.  But  fortu 
nately  neither  Rosenberg  nor  Rosen  possessed  a  sense 
of  irony,  and  so  there  were  no  feelings  hurt.  Thyrsis 
had  written  the  play  without  having  met  either  a  press- 
agent  or  the  head  of  a  music-bureau ;  he  had  drawn  the 
character  of  Moses  after  the  fashion  of  the  German, 
evolving  the  idea  of  an  elephant  out  of  his  inner  con 
sciousness.  But  now  that  it  was  done,  he  was  amazed 
to  see  how  well  it  was  done ;  he  was  like  an  astronomer 
who  works  out  the  orbit  of  a  new  planet,  and  after 
wards  discovers  it  with  his  telescope. 

As  the  preparations  neared  completeness,  Thyrsis 
found  himself  more  and  more  disturbed  about  the  pro 
duction.  He  was  able  to  judge  of  the  actors  now,  and 
they  seemed  to  him  to  be  cheap  actors — to  be  relying 
for  their  effects  upon  exaggeration,  to  be  making  the 


THE    END   OF   THE    TETHER          389 

play  into  a  farce.  But  when  he  pointed  this  out  to 
Mr.  Tapping,  Mr.  Tapping  was  offended;  and  when 
he  spoke  to  Mr.  Jones,  he  was  referred  to  Miss  Lewis. 
All  he  could  accomplish  with  Miss  Lewis,  however,  was 
to  bring  up  the  eternal  question  of  the  lack  of  "charm" 
in  her  part.  Poor  Ethelynda  was  also  getting  into  an 
unhappy  frame  of  mind ;  she  had  begun  to  doubt 
whether  the  "drama  of  ideas"  was  her  forte  after  all — 
and  whether  the  ideas  in  this  particular  drama  were 
real  ideas  or  sham.  She  got  the  habit  of  inviting 
friends  in  to  judge  it,  and  she  was  always  of  the  opinion 
of  the  last  friend ;  so  the  production  was  like  a  ship 
whose  pilot  has  lost  his  bearings. 

The  time  drew  near  for  the  opening-performance, 
which  was  to  be  given  in  a  manufacturing  city  in  New 
England.  The  nerves  of  all  the  company  were  stretched 
to  the  breaking  point ;  and  overwrought  as  he  was  him 
self,  Thyrsis  could  not  but  pity  the  unhappy  "leading 
lady",  who  could  hardly  keep  herself  together,  even 
with  the  drugs  he  saw  her  taking. 

The  "dress-rehearsal"  began  at  six  o'clock  on  Sun 
day  evening;  and  from  the  very  start  everything  went 
wrong.  But  Thyrsis  did  not  know  the  peculiar  fact 
about  dress-rehearsals,  that  everything  always  goes 
wrong;  and  so  he  suffered  untellable  agonies  at  the 
sight  of  the  blundering  and  stupidity.  Mr.  Tapping 
stormed  and  fumed  and  hopped  about  the  stage,  -and 
swore,  first  at  his  gouty  foot,  and  then  at  .some  mem 
ber  of  the  company ;  and  he  sent  them  back,  over  and 
over  again  through  the  scenes — it  was  midnight  before 
they  finished  the  first  act,  and  it  was  six  o'clock  in  the 
morning  before  they  finished  the  second,  and  it  was 
nearly  noon  of  Monday  before  the  wretched  men  and 
women  went  home  to  sleep. 


390  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis  had  left  before  that,  partly  because  he  could 
not  endure  to  see  the  mess  that  things  were  in,  and 
partly  because  they  told  him  he  would  have  to  make  a 
speech  that  night,  and  he  had  to  spend  two  of  his  hard- 
earned  dollars  for  the  hire  of  a  dress-suit.  Here,  as 
always,  the  scarcity  of  dollars  was  like  a  thorn  in  his 
flesh.  He  had  been  obliged  to  leave  Corydon  heart 
broken  at  home,  because  he  had  not  been  able  to  lay 
by  enough  to  bring  her;  he  had  to  stay  at  a  cheap 
hotel — cheaper  even  than  any  of  the  actors ;  and  when 
Miss  Lewis  and  Mr.  Tapping  went  out  to  lunch,  he 
would  have  to  say  that  he  was  not  hungry,  and  then 
go  off  and  get  something  at  a  corner  grocery. 

The  hour  of  the  performance  came ;  and  Thyrsis,  like 
a  gambler  who  has  staked  all  his  possessions  upon  the 
turn  of  one  card,  sat  in  a  box  and  watched  the  audience 
and  the  play.  The  house  was  crowded;  and  the  play 
wright  saw  with  amazed  relief  that  all  his  agonies  of 
the  night  before  had  been  needless — the  performance 
went  without  a  hitch  from  beginning  to  end.  And  also, 
to  his  unutterable  delight,  the  play  seemed  to  "score". 
He  had  gazed  at  the  rows  of  respectable  burghers  of 
this  prosperous  manufacturing  town,  and  wondered 
what  understanding  they  could  have  of  his  tragedy  of 
"genius".  But  they  seemed  to  be  understanding;  at 
any  rate  they  laughed  and  applauded ;  and  when  Lloyd 
smashed  the  violin  over  von  Arne's  head  and  the  cur 
tain  went  down,  there  was  quite  a  little  uproar. 

Thyrsis  came  out  and  made  his  timid  speech,  which 
was  also  applauded ;  and  then  came  the  last  act,  and 
the  women  got  out  their  handkerchiefs  on  schedule  time, 
and  Mr.  Rosenberg  stood  behind  Thyrsis  in  the  box, 
rubbing  his  hands  together  gleefully.  So  the  play 
wright  sent  a  telegram  to  his  wife,  saying  that  the  play 


THE    END    OF   THE    TETHER          391 

was  a  certain  success;  and  then  he  went  to  bed,  as 
suredly  the  happiest  man  who  had  ever  slept  in  that 
fifty-cent  hotel ! 

But  alas — the  next  morning,  there  were  the  local 
papers  ;  and  with  one  accord  they  all  "roasted''  the  play  ! 
Their  accounts  of  it  sounded  for  all  the  world  like  the 
play  itself — those  extracts  which  the  two  professors 
had  read  from  the  criticisms  of  Lloyd's  concert !  Thyr- 
sis  wondered  if  the  critics  must  not  have  taken  offence 
at  the  satire ! 

Then,  going  to  the  theatre,  the  first  person  he  met 
was  Rosenberg,  who  sent  another  chill  to  his  heart. 
"First  nights  are  always  good,"  said  Mr.  Rosenberg. 
"It  was  all  'paper',  you  know.  To-night  is  the  real 
test." 

And  so  the  second  performance  came;  and  in  the 
theatre  were  some  two  hundred  people,  and  the  occa 
sion  was  the  most  awful  "frost"  that  ever  froze  the 
heart  of  an  unhappy  partisan  of  the  "drama  of  ideas". 
After  which,  according  to  schedule,  the  play  moved  to 
another  manufacturing  town ;  and  in  the  theatre  were 
some  two  hundred  and  fifty  people — and  a  frost  some 
ten  degrees  lower  yet ! 

§  11.  So  at  twelve  o'clock  that  night  there  was  a 
consultation  in  a  room  at  the  hotel,  attended  by  Thyrsis 
and  Miss  Lewis  and  Mr.  Tapping  and  Mr.  Jones. 

"You  see,"  said  the  last  named ;  "the  play  is  a 
failure." 

"Absolutely !"  said  Mr.  Tapping. 

"I  knew  it  would  be!"  cried  Miss  Lewis. 

"And  you?"  asked  Mr.  Jones  of  Thyrsis. 

"It  has  not  succeeded  in  these  towns,"  said  Thyrsis. 
"But  then — how  could  it  succeed,  except  where  there 


392  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

are  intellectual  people?     You  promised  to  take  it  to 
New  York." 

"It's  no  use!"  declared  Jones.     "New  York  would 
laugh  it  dead  in  one  night." 

"It  would,"  said  Mr.  Tapping,  decisively. 

"I  knew  it  all  along,"  cried  Miss  Lewis. 

So  they  went  on  for  ten  minutes ;  and  then,  "What 
are  you  going  to  do?"  asked  Thyrsis,  in  terror. 

"The  play  must  be  altered,"  said  Jones. 

"How  altered?" 

"It  must  be  altered  as  Miss  Lewis  asked  you  at  first." 

Thyrsis  sprang  up.     "What!"  he  cried. 

"It  must  be  done!"  said  Mr.  Jones. 

"It  must,"  said  Mr.  Tapping. 

"I  knew  it  all  along!"  cried  Miss  Lewis  again. 

"But    I    won't    stand    for    it!"    exclaimed    Thyrsis, 
wildly. 

"It  must  be  done!"  said  Mr.  Jones,  in  his  heaviest 
steam-roller  tone. 

"But  I  won't  have  it !" 

"What'll  you  do?" 

"I'll  go  to  law!     I'll  get  an  injunction." 

"What  is  there  in  our  contract  to  prevent  our  alter 
ing  the  play?"  demanded  the  man. 

"What !"  gasped  Thyrsis.     "You  know  what  our  un 
derstanding  was !" 

"Humph!"  said  the  other.     "Can  you  prove  it?" 

"And  do  you  mean  that  you  would  go  back  on  that 
understanding  ?" 

"And  do  you  mean  that  you  expect  me  to  see  this 
money  wasted  and  the  play  sent  to  pot?" 

Thyrsis,  in  his  agony,  turned  to  Miss  Lewis.     "Will 
you  let  him  break  our  bargain?"  he  cried. 

"But  what  else  is  there  to  be  done?"  she  answered. 


THE    END   OF   THE    TETHER          393 

"Don't  you  see  that  the  play  is  a  failure?  And  don't 
you  see  the  plight  you've  got  me  in  ?" 

Thyrsis  was  dumb  with  dismay.  He  stared  from  one 
of  these  people  to  another,  and  his  heart  went  down — 
down.  He  saw  that  his  case  was  hopeless.  He  had  no 
one  to  help  him  or  to  advise  him,  and  he  had  less  than 
eleven  dollars  in  his  pocket. 

"What  do  you  propose  to  do?"  he  asked,  weakly. 

"I  have  already  telegraphed  to  Richard  Haberton," 
said  Jones.  "He  will  meet  us  and  see  the  next  two  per 
formances  ;  and  then  we'll  lay  the  company  off  until 
we  get  some  kind  of  a  practical  play." 

And  so  the  steam-roller  rolled  and  the  matter  was 
settled ;  and  Thyrsis,  broken-hearted,  bid  the  trio  fare 
well,  and  took  an  early  train  back  to  New  York. 

He  never  saw  any  member  of  the  company  again — 
and  he  never  saw  the  "practical  play"  which  Mr. 
Richard  Haberton  made  out  of  "The  Genius".  What 
was  done  he  gathered  from  the  press-clippings  that 
came  to  him — the  famous  author  of  "The  Rajah's 
Diamond"  caused  Helena  to  fall  into  Lloyd's  arms  at 
the  end  of  the  second  act,  and  had  them  safely  if  not 
happily  married  at  the  beginning  of  the  third.  Also 
he  wrote  several  "charming"  scenes  for  Ethelynda 
Lewis,  and  two  weeks  later  the  play  had  a  second  open 
ing  in  another  manufacturing  town  of  New  England — 
where  the  critics,  awed  by  the  name  of  the  distinguished 
dramatist  upon  the  play-bills,  were  moved  to  faint 
praise.  But  perhaps  it  was  that  Mr.  Richard  Haber 
ton  required  more  than  two  weeks'  time  for  the  evolving 
of  real  "charm" ;  at  any  rate  the  audience  came  in  no 
larger  numbers  to  see  this  new  version,  and  the  misbe 
gotten  production  lived  for  another  six  performances, 


394  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  died  a  peaceful  death  at  the  very  gates   of  the 
metropolis. 

And  such  was  the  end  of  Thyrsis'  career  as  a  play 
wright.  In  return  for  all  his  labors  and  his  agonies 
he  received  some  weeks  later  a  note  from  Robertson 
Jones,  Inc.,  to  the  effect  that  the  books  of  "The 
Genius"  showed  a  total  deficit  of  six  thousand  seven 
hundred  and  forty-two  dollars  and  seventeen  cents ;  and 
accordingly,  under  the  contract,  there  was  nothing  due 
to  the  author. 


BOOK  XI 
THE  TORTURE-HOUSE 


They  sat  in  the  darkness,  watching  where  the  star 
light  gleamed  upon  the  water. 

"We  had  always  hope,"  she  was  saying.  "How  end 
lessly  we  hoped!" 

"Could  we  do  it  now?"  he  asked;  and  after  a  pause, 
he  quoted  from  the  poem — 

"Unbreachable  the  fort 
Of  the  long-battered  world  uplifts  its  wall; 
And  strange  and  vain   the  earthly   turmoil 
And  near  and  real  the  charm  of  thy  repose, 
And  night  as  welcome  as  a  friend  would  fall!" 


§  1.  THYRSIS  came  home  beaten  and  crushed,  worn 
out  with  overwork  and  worry,  his  heart  black  with  rage 
and  bitterness  and  despair.  He  met  Corydon  in  the 
park,  and  she  listened  to  his  story,  white  and  terrified. 
She  had  swallowed  all  her  disappointment,  had  stayed 
at  home  with  the  baby  while  he  went  with  the  play ;  and 
now  the  outcome  of  it  all  was  this ! 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  she  whispered;  and  he 
answered,  "I  don't  know.  I  don't  know." 

She  saw 'the  terrible  state  he  was  in,  and  she  dared 
not  utter  a  single  word  of  her  own  grief.  She  bit  her 
lip,  and  choked  back  her  tears.  "This  is  my  life,"  she 
thought  to  herself;  "I  must  endure,  endure — that  is 
all!" 

He  could  not  afford  even  to  sit  and  talk  with  her 
very  long;  there  was  no  time  to  indulge  in  the  luxury 
of  despair.  His  money  was  gone,  and  he  was  in  debt 
for  some  that  he  had  borrowed.  Since  irregular  eat- 
ing  had  been  telling  upon  him  again,  he  had  been  get 
ting  his  meals  with  an  acquaintance  of  the  family,  who 
kept  a  boarding-house  uptown.  On  the  strength  of  his 
prospects,  she  had  trusted  him  for  four  dollars  a  week ; 
and  now  the  play  had  failed,  and  he  had  to  go  and 
tell  her,  and  listen  to  new  protests  as  to  his  folly  in 
refusing  to  "get  a  position".  But  in  the  end  she  bade 
him  stay  on ;  and  so  he  was  divided  between  his  shame, 
and  the  need  of  something  to  eat  day  by  day. 

Time  dragged  on,  and  still  there  was  no  gleam  of 
light.  There  were  shameful  hours  in  these  weeks — 

397 


898  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

he  touched  the  lowest  point  yet  in  his  life.  This  was  a 
typical  cheap  boarding-house,  a  place  where  the  drudges 
of  trade  were  herded ;  it.  was  a  home  of  sordidness  and 
ugliness — to  Thyrsis  its  people  seemed  like  carefully- 
selected  types  of  all  things  that  he  hated  in  the  world. 
There  was  a  young  broker's  clerk,  whose  patter  was  of 
prices,  and  of  fortunes  made  without  service.  There 
was  a  grey-haired  bookkeeper  for  a  giant  "trust",  a 
man  who  could  not  have  had  more  pride  in  that  great 
engine  of  exploitation,  or  more  contempt  for  its  vic 
tims,  had  he  been  the  president  and  chief  owner  thereof. 
There  was  a  young  divinity-student,  who  made  greedy 
reaches  for  the  cake-plate,  and  who  summed  up  for 
Thyrsis  all  the  cant  and  commonness  of  the  church. 
There  was  a  dry-goods  clerk,  who  wore  flaring  ties,  and 
who  played  the  role  of  a  "masher"  upon  the  avenue 
every  evening.  And  finally  there  was  a  red-faced  Irish 
man  who  wore  large  shiny  cuffs  and  a  false  diamond, 
and  who  held  some  political  job,  and  was  voluble  in  be 
half  of  "the  organization". 

Among  these  people  Thyrsis  sat  three  times  a  day, 
silent  and  tortured,  paying  a  high  price  for  each  morsel 
of  food  he  ate.  But  also  he  was  lonely,  and  craving 
any  sort  of  respite ;  and  in  the  course  of  time  he  be 
came  acquainted  with  several  of  the  younger  men.  One 
of  the  diversions  in  their  pitiful  and  narrow  lives  was 
to  gather  in  some  room  and  indulge  in  petty  gambling; 
sitting  for  hours  upon  hours  with  their  faculties  alert 
upon  the  attempt  to  get  from  each  other  some  smaD 
fraction  of  that  weekly  stipend  which  kept  them  alive. 
Sometimes  they  played  "penny-ante",  and  sometimes 
vingt  et  un;  once,  as  it  chanced,  they  needed  another 
player,  and  they  urged  Thyrsis  to  join  them. 

And  so,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  Thyrsis  learned 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  399 

what  it  meant  to  lay  his  soul  upon  the  lap  of  the  god 
dess  of  chance.  From  eight  o'clock  that  evening  until 
two  the  next  morning,  he  sat  in  a  suffocating  room  full 
of  cigarette-smoke,  trying  in  vain  to  win  back  the  dol 
lar  or  two  he  had  lost  at  the  outset ;  flushed  and  trem 
bling  with  excitement,  and  hating  himself  with  a  bitter 
and  tormenting  hatred.  And  so  he  discovered  his  vice ; 
he  discovered  that  he  had  in  him  tne  soul  of  the  gambler ! 
And  ail  the  rest  of  the  winter  he  had  to  wrestle  with 
that  shame.  He  would  go  to  his  dinner,  tired  and 
heartsick ;  and  they  would  ask  him  to  play  again ;  and 
he — the  man  who  carried  a  message  for  humanity  in  his 
heart — he  would  yield!  Three  times  during  that  win 
ter  he  fell  into  the  mire;  on  Washington's  birthday  he 
began  to  play  in  the  morning,  and  stopping  only  for 
meals,  he  played  until  long  after  midnight.  Forever 
afterwards  he  was  a  humbler  and  a  gentler  man  be 
cause  of  that  experience ;  understanding  how  squalor 
abases  one,  and  how  swiftly  and  stealthily  an  evil  pas 
sion  closes  its  grasp  about  the  soul. 

§  2.  OF  this  shameful  thing  he  said  not  a  word  to 
Corydon.  But  he  avoided  meeting  her,  because  of  the 
depths  of  his  despair.  And  so  at  last  there  came  a 
letter  from  her — a  long  and  unusual  one.  Corydon, 
too,  was  having  her  troubles,  it  appeared. 

"I  am  writing  in  haste,"  she  said ;  "I  shall  mail  the 
letter  at  once,  before  my  resolution  fails  me.  At  least 
a  dozen  times  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  tell  you  or 
to  write  you  what  is  here,  and  each  time  I  have  turned 
back.  But  now  I  have  got  to  a  stage  where  I  must  have 
your  help. 

"I  enclose  a  long  letter  which  I  wrote  you  years  ago, 
before  we  were  married.  I  was  looking  over  some  old 


400  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

papers  the  other  day  and  came  upon  it.  Generally 
when  I  wrote  you  letters  that  I  did  not  send,  I  tore 
them  up ;  but  something  led  me  to  keep  this  one — I  had 
a  feeling  that  some  day  it  would  be  interesting  as  a 
curiosity.  You  see,  I  am  always  persuading  myself  that 
I  can  get  over  this  trouble,  and  learn  to  laugh  at  it; 
and  I  am  always  succeeding — but  only  to  have  it  crop 
up  in  some  different  form.  I  have  told  you  a  little  of 
it  now  and  then — but  stop  and  read  the  enclosed,  and 
you  will  see." 

So  Thyrsis  read  the  old  letter — a  missive  of  anguish 
and  terror,  and  beginning  with  elaborate  preludings 
and  hesitations: 

"I  implore  you  to  be  patient  with  me  this  once ;  and 
when  I  have  gotten  through,  I  want  you  still  to  love 
me,  if  possible.  I  have  been  trying  to  get  the  courage 
to  write  you  something  that  is  so  mean  and  low,  childish 
and  almost  imbecile,  that  there  have  been  moments  in 
which  my  horror  of  it  was  absolutely  unspeakable; 
when  I  have  imagined  myself  as  a  soul  damned, 
when  I  thought  that  if  you  knew,  you  would  think  I 
had  a  diseased  brain.  I  only  ask  you  to  read  patiently 
what  I  am  going  to  write ;  but  know  that  every  word  is 
a  horrible  effort,  that  it  is  torture  and  humiliation  to 
me  to  write  it.  I  have  a  feeling  now  as  though  I  were 
psychologically  dissecting  something. 

"It  must  have  been  eight  years  ago,  when  I  was  sick 
in  bed;  in  a  fever  or  delirium  I  conceived  the  idea  that 
there  was  a  coffin  under  my  bed.  The  thought  took 
hold  of  me,  somehow,  like  an  octopus,  and  I  used  to 
writhe  under  it,  and  get  into  fearful  perspirations.  I 
never  went  near  a  bed  that  I  didn't  think  of  this  thing 
with  the  same  horror. 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  401 

"And  so  I  seemed  to  have  created  a  nervousness,  a 
sense  of  dread,  before  which  I  was  absolutely  helpless. 
I  cannot  tell  you  how  hopelessly  or  fearfully  I  suffered, 
or  what  depths  of  despondency  and  despair  and  black 
ness  I  was  cast  into.  I  cannot  understand  how  a 
creature  could  so  manufacture  torments  for  itself.  But 
this  is  not  all,  just  for  once  have  mercy — and  yet  even 
now  I  am  laughing  at  myself! 

"The  winter  I  was  sixteen  I  was  much  disappointed 
that  I  could  not  go  to  college,  and  almost  the  whole 
winter,  when  I  was  not  diverted,  I  would  brood  over  this 
habit.  As  I  grew  older,  it  would  come  to  me  in  spasms, 
and  it  seemed  to  my  dawning  sense  so  monstrously  child 
like,  so  insane,  that  I  was  aghast  that  it  had  power  to 
affect  me.  I  can  find  no  words  to  tell  you  of  the  un 
speakable  horror  with  which  I  saw,  in  my  older  days, 
that  a  thought  could  so  torment  me;  the  mere  fact  of 
its  being  able  to  torment  I  could  never  forget.  I  know 
it  was  silly,  unreasonable;  and  yet  every  time  it  came 
to  me  I  would  be  plunged  into  a  hopelessness  and* melan 
choly,  than  which  I  can  honestly  conceive  nothing  more 
fearful  upon  earth. 

"Well,  I  continued  to  pursue  myself  with  this  mor 
bidity  (I  would  almost,  rather  kill  myself  than  write 
this).  As  I  got  older  my  terror  was  less,  but  my 
melancholy  greater,  until  I  would  be  only  half  con 
scious  of  what  I  was  allowing  myself  to  do.  I  seemed 
to  have  engendered  within  myself  a  hob-goblin.  Once 
—it  was  only  last  winter — I  saw  a  nasty  word  written 
on  a  fence,  and  it  sent  a  shudder  through  me,  for  I 
knew  it  would  follow  me  and.  make  me  think  of  other 
things  like  it.  I  felt,  since  thoughts  have  such  power 
to  terrorize  me,  how  can  I  ever  get  away  from  them? 

"Oh,  how  I  have  struggled — tried  to  say  it  was  not 


402  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

true — that  I  was  just  as  sane  as  other  people!  And 
this  made  my  thirst  for  beauty  all  the  more  maddening, 
and  my  melancholy  all  the  more  complete !  So  I  have 
lived,  at  intervale,  and  words  cannot  describe  the  hell 
that  I  have  endured,  the  more  horrible  because  it 
seemed  to  me  so  unreasonable,  so  insane.  It  occurred 
to  me  more  or  less  this  summer,  though  in  a  milder 
form ;  but  it  often  frightened  me  more  than  ever,  as  I 
felt  how  beautiful  you  were,  and  what  you  would  think 
of  me,  if  you  knew  I  was  capable  of  being  the  prey  of 
such  thoughts.  So  they  were  always  more  dreadful  to 
me. 

"Can  you  possibly  understand  how  the  thought  of  a 
word  could  make  me  shudder  ?  The  mere  idea  of  my  be 
ing  capable  of  thinking  of  anything  that  was  not 
beautiful !  When  I  longed  to  be  only  the  embodiment  of 
beauty — and  sometimes  I  am  beautiful !  I  look  into 
the  glass,  and  I  seem  to  have  something  in  my  face  that 
is  a  promise  of  a  glory  to  come — a  light,  a  something, 
— I  love  to  imagine  it.  And  then,  that  a  thought 
should  knock  me  prone,  and  make  me  cringe — from  the 
mere  fact  of  its  lowness  and  meanness ! 

"For  the  last  two  or  three  days  I  have  again  vic 
timized  myself ;  and  when  I  was  not  studying  I  was  ask 
ing  myself  in  anguish  what  was  the  matter  with  me, 
and  if  there  was  no  hope  for  me  on  earth.  I  dodged 
around  and  tried  to  laugh  it  off,  then  I  went  to  the 
piano  and  lost  myself  in  the  dissatisfaction  of  my  play 
ing  ;  but  when  I  stopped,  I  was  conscious  of  a  great 
depression,  as  though  I  were  chained  in  a  dungeon.  I 
jumped  up,  and  said  I  could  stand  it  no  longer.  I 
will  tell  Thyrsis,  I  said;  but  no,  I  will  die  first!  I 
added.  He  could  not  tolerate  me  afterwards,  he  would 
think  me  only  fit  for  the  insane-asylum.  Oh,  why 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  403 

should  I  be  so  cursed?  And  then,  somehow,  I  imagined 
that  I  told  you,  and  that  you  laughed  at  me,  that  you 
pitied  me — and  that  you  held  out  your  hand,  and  said, 
'Come,  you  shatt  find  beauty — poor,  deluded,  wretched, 
little  creature!'  I  really  imagined  that  this  had  hap 
pened,  and  I  was  relieved  as  with  a  draught  of  fresh 
air. 

"Oh,  God  in  Heaven,  to  think  that  I  could  ever  have 
been  so  degraded!  My  head  hurts,  and  I  absolutely 
am  dazed,  to  think  that  I  have  been  able  to  write  you  of 
something  for  which  (though  it  has  not  been  my  mak 
ing)  I  am  so  ashamed  and  humiliated  I  can  hardly  hold 
my  head  up.  I  think  in  my  short  life  I  have  atoned  for 
the  sins  of  many  souls." 

§  3.  SUCH  was  the  old-time  letter.  "And  now," 
wrote  Corydon,  "I  don't  want  you  to  think  that  if  I  did 
not  send  you  this,  it  was  because  I  was  afraid  to  do 
it,  or  unwilling  to  trust  to  your  love.  It  was  simply 
because  I  felt  that  I  could  conquer  these  things — that 
it  would  be  weak  and  contemptible  of  me  not  to  do  so. 
Nor  is  the  reason  I  write  you  now  that  I  have  not  been 
able  to  conquer  them,  that  I  am  still  at  the  mercy  of 
such  habits.  I  am  a  grown  woman,  and  I  am  not  afraid 
of  words ;  I  tell  myself  this  a  hundred  times ;  and  it  is 
true — and  yet  there  is  a  way  in  which  it  is  not  true. 
The  thing  is  so  intricate — I  never  get  to  the  end  of  it; 
I  rid  myself  of  the  fear  of  a  hateful  idea,  but  there 
remains  the  fact  that  I  should  have  been  afraid;  there 
is  the  fear  of  fear.  And  then  comes  a  flood  of  shame 
— that  I  should  have  it  in  me  to  be  afraid  of  fear ! 

"Thyrsis,  as  I  write  to  you  now  I  see  clearly  how 
perfectly  preposterous  and  unreal  all  this  is ;  and  again 
there  comes  to  me  the  impulse  to  tear  up  this  letter, 


404  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  banish  the  troop  of  hob-goblins  from  my  mind. 
But  no,  this  time  I  am  determined  to  make  a  clean  breast 
of  the  thing — for  I  see  that  secrecy  and  solitude  are 
what  it  feeds  on.  If  I  were  happy  and  busy  with  you, 
such  ideas  would  have  no  power  over  me.  But  think 
how  it  is,  with  my  loneliness  and  despair !  I  don't  want 
to  say  anything  to  make  your  task  harder — but  oh, 
Thyrsis,  it  is  frightful  to  have  nothing  to  do  but  wait, 
and  wait,  and  wait !  The  baby  wakes  me  up  in  the 
night  and  I  lie  for  hours — it  is  at  such  times  that  these 
phantoms  take  hold  of  me.  Do  you  realize  that  I  liter 
ally  never  know  what  it  is  to  have  more  than  three  or 
four  consecutive  hours  of  sleep? 

"No,  I  am  not  insane,  I  tell  myself ;  I  am  not  insane ! 
It  is  the  circumstances  of  my  life  that  cause  this  melan 
cholia  and  misery.  It  has  been  my  life,  from  the  very 
beginning — for  what  a  hopeful  and  joyous  creature  I 
would  have  been,  had  I  only  had  a  chance  as  a  girl! 
I  know  that ;  and  you  must  tell  it  to  me,  and  help  me 
to  believe  it." 

Thyrsis  read  this  with  less  surprise  than  Corydon 
had  imagined ;  for  she  had  been  wont  to  drop  hints 
about  her  trouble  from  time  to  time.  He  was  shocked, 
however,  to  find  what  a  hold  it  had  taken  upon  her ; 
the  thing  sent  a  chill  of  fear  to  his  heart.  Could  it  be 
after  all  that  she  had  some  taint?  But  he  saw  at  once 
that  he  must  not  let  her  see  any  such  feeling ;  the  least 
hint  of  it  would  have  driven  her  to  distraction.  On 
the  contrary,  he  must  minimize  the  trouble,  must  help 
her  to  laugh  it  away,  as  she  asked. 

He  went  to  meet  her  in  the  park,  and  found  her  in 
an  agony  of  distress ;  she  had  mailed  the  letter,  and 
then  she  had  wished  to  recall  it,  and  had  been  struggling 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  405 

ever  since  with  the  idea  that  he  would  be  disgusted  with 
her.  Now,  when  she  found  that  such  was  not  the  case, 
that  he  still  loved  her  and  trusted  her,  she  was  trans 
ported  with  gratitude. 

"But  dearest,"  he  said,  "how  absurd  it  is  to  be 
ashamed  of  an  idea !  If  ugly  things  exist,  don't  we  have 
to  hear  of  them  and  know  of  them?  And  so  why 
frighten  ourselves  because  they  are  in  our  minds?" 

"But  Thyrsis,"  cried  she,  "they  are  so  hateful !" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "But  then  the  more  you  hate  them, 
the  more  they  haunt  you !" 

"That's  just  it!"  she  exclaimed. 

"But  what  harm  can  they  do?  Can  they  have  any 
effect  upon  your  character?  You  must  say  to  yourself 
that  all  this  is  a  consequence  of  the  structure  of  your 
brain-cells.  What  could  be  more  futile  than  trying  to 
forget?  As  if  the  very  essence  of  the  trying  was  not 
remembering !" 

So  Thyrsis  went  on  to  argue  with  her.  He  made  her 
promise  him  that  in  future  she  would  tell  him  of  all 
her  obsessions,  permitting  no  fear  or  shame  to  deter 
her ;  and  so  thereafter  he  would  have  to  listen  periodi 
cally  to  long  accounts  of  her  psychological  agonies, 
and  help  her  to  hunt  out  the  "hob-goblins"  from  the 
tangled  thickets  of  her  mind.  They  were  forever  set 
tling  the  matter,  positively  and  finally — but  alas,  only 
to  have  something  unsettle  it  again.  So  Thyrsis  had 
to  add  to  his  other  accomplishments  the  equipment  of 
a  psycho-pathologist;  he  brushed  up  his  French,  and 
read  learned  treatises  upon  the  researches  in  the  Sal- 
pet riere,  and  the  theories  of  the  "Nancy  School". 

§  4.  ANOTHER  month  passed  by,  and  still  there  was 
no  rift  in  the  clouds.  Once  more  Corydon  was  for- 


406  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

bidden  to  see  him,  and  so  her  pain  grew  day  by  day. 
At  last  there  came  another  letter,  voicing  utter  despera 
tion.  Something  must  be  done,  she  declared,  she  was 
slowly  going  out  of  her  mind.  Thyrsis  could  have  no 
idea  of  the  shamefulness  of  her  position,  the  humilia 
tions  she  had  to  face.  "I  tell  you  the  thing  is  putting 
a  brand  upon  my  soul,"  she  wrote.  "It  is  something 
I  shall  never  get  over  all  my  life.  It  is  withering  me 
up — it  is  destroying  my  self-respect,  my  very  decency ; 
it  is  depriving  me  of  my  power  to  act,  or  even  to  think. 
People  come  in,  relatives  or  friends — even  strangers  to 
me — and  peer  at  me  and  pry  into  my  affairs ;  I  hear 
them  whispering  in  the  parlor — 'Hasn't  he  got  a  posi 
tion  yet?'  or  'How  can  she  have  anything  to  do  with 
him?'  The  servants  gossip  about  me — the  woman  I 
have  for  a  nurse  despises  me  and  insults  me,  and  I  have 
not  the  courage  to  rebuke  her.  To-day  I  went  almost 
wild  with  fury — I  rushed  into  the  bathroom  and  locked 
the  door  and  flung  myself  upon  the  floor.  I  found  my 
self  gnawing  at  the  rug  in  my  rage — I  mean  that 
literally.  That  is  what  life  has  left  for  me ! 

"I  tell  you  you  must  take  me  away,  we  must  get  out 
of  this  fiendish  city.  Let  us  go  into  the  wilderness  as 
you  said,  and  live  as  we  can — I  would  rather  starve  to 
death  than  face  these  things.  Let  us  get  into  the 
country,  Thyrsis.  You  can  work  as  a  farm-hand,  and 
earn  a  few  dollars  a  week — surely  that  could  not  be  a 
greater  strain  upon  us  than  the  way  things  are  now." 

When  Thyrsis  received  this,  he  racked  his  brains 
once  more ;  and  then  he  sat  down  and  wrote  a  letter  to 
Barry  Creston.  He  told  how  he  had  worked  over  the 
play,  and  how  it  had  gone  to  ruin ;  he  told  of  his 
present  plight.  He  knew,  he  said,  that  Mr.  Creston 
had  been  interested  in  the  play,  and  that  he  was  a  man 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  407 

who  understood  the  needs  of  the  artist-life.  Would  he 
lend  two  hundred  dollars,  which  would  suffice  until 
Thyrsis  could  get  another  work  completed? 

He  waited  a  week  for  a  reply  to  this ;  and  when  it 
arrived  he  opened  it  with  trembling  fingers.  He  half 
expected  a  check  to  fall  fluttering  to  the  floor ;  but  alas, 
there  was  not  a  single  flutter.  "I  have  read  your  let 
ter,"  wrote  the  young  prince,  "and  I  have  considered 
the  matter  carefully.  I  would  do  what  you  ask,  were 
it  not  for  my  conviction  that  it  would  not  be  a  good 
thing  for  you.  It  seems  to  me  the  testimony  of  all  ex 
perience,  that  artists  do  their  great  work  under  the 
spur  of  necessity.  I  do  not  believe  that  real  art  can 
ever  be  subsidized.  It  is  for  men  that  you  are  writing ; 
and  you  must  find  out  how  to  make  men  hear  you.  You 
may  not  thank  me  for  this  now,  but  some  day  you  will, 
I  believe." 

After  duly  pondering  which  communication,  Thyrsis 
racked  his  wits,  and  bethought  him  of  yet  another  per 
son  to  try.  He  sat  himself  down  and  addressed  Mr. 
Robertson  Jones.  He  explained  that  he  was  in  this  cruel 
plight,  owing  to  his  having  devoted  so  many  months  to 
"The  Genius."  Even  the  actors  had  received  something 
for  the  performances  of  the  play  they  had  given ;  but 
the  author  had  received  nothing  at  all.  He  asked  Mr. 
Jones  for  a  personal  loan  to  help  him  in  a  great  emer 
gency  ;  and  he  promised  to  repay  it  at  the  earliest  pos 
sible  moment.  To  which  Mr.  Jones  made  this  reply— 
"Inasmuch  as  the  failure  of  the  play  was  due  solely  to 
your  own  obstinacy,  it  seems  to  me  that  your  present 
experiences  are  affording  exactly  the  discipline  you 
need." 

§   5.     HOWEVER,  there  are  many  ups  and  downs  in 


408  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

I 

the  trade  of  free-lance  writer.  The  very  day  after  he 
had  received  this  letter,  there  came,  in  quick  succession, 
two  bursts  of  sunlight  through  the  clouds  of  Thyrsis' 
despair.  The  first  was  a  letter,  written  in  a  quaint 
script,  from  a  man  who  explained  that  he  was  interested 
in  a  "Free  People's  Theatre"  in  one  of  the  cities  of 
Germany.  "You  will  please  to  accept  my  congratula 
tions,"  he  wrote;  "I  had  never  known  such  a  play  as 
yours  in  America  to  be  written.  I  should  greatly  be 
pleased  to  translate  the  play,  so  that  it  might  be  known 
in  Germany.  Our  compensation  would  have  to  be  little, 
as  you  will  understand ;  but  of  appreciation  I  think  you 
may  receive  much  in  the  Fatherland." 

To  which  Thyrsis  sent  a  cordial  response,  saying  that 
he  would  be  glad  of  any  remuneration,  and  enclosing  a 
copy  of  the  manuscript  of  "The  Genius".  And  then — 
only  two  days  later — came  the  other  event,  a  still  more 
notable  one ;  a  letter  from  the  publisher  who  had  been 
number  thirty-seven  on  the  list  of  "The  Hearer  of 
Truth".  Thyrsis  had  got  so  discouraged  about  this 
work  that  he  now  sent  it  about  as  a  matter  of  routine, 
and  without  thinking  of  it  at  all.  Great,  therefore,  was 
his  amazement  when  he  opened  the  letter  and  read  that 
this  publisher  was  disposed  to  undertake  it,  and  would 
be  glad  to  see  him  and  talk  over  terms. 

Thyrsis  went,  speculating  on  the  way  as  to  what 
strange  manner  of  being  this  publisher  might  be.  The 
solution  of  the  mystery  he  found  was  that  the  publisher 
was  new  at  the  business,  and  had  entrusted  his  "literary 
department"  to  a  very  young  man  who  had  enthusiasms. 
The  young  man  held  his  position  for  only  a  month  or 
two ;  but  in  that  month  or  two  Thyrsis  got  in  his 


"innings" 


The   publisher   wished  to   bring   the  book   out  that 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  409 

spring.  He  offered  a  ten  per  cent,  royalty,  and  the 
trembling  author  summoned  the  courage  to  ask  for  one 
hundred  dollars  advance ;  when  he  got  it,  he  was  divided 
between  his  delight,  and  a  sneaking  regret  that  he  had 
not  tried  for  a  hundred  and  fifty! 

The  very  next  day  came  the  contracts  and  the  money ; 
Thyrsis  marvelled  at  the  fact  that  there  were  people 
who  could  sign  checks  for  a  hundred  dollars,  and 
apparently  not  mind  it  in  the  least.  With  the 
money  he  was  able  to  pay  all  his  debts,  and  also  a  bill 
which  Corydon  had  received  from  a  "specialist"  who 
had  been  treating  her.  This  was  a  new  habit  that  Cory 
don  was  developing,  as  a  result  of  headaches  and  back 
aches  and  other  obscure  miseries.  These  amiable  "spe 
cialists"  permitted  one  to  run  up  a  bill  with  them ;  and 
so,  whenever  Thyrsis  made  a  new  "strike",  there  were 
always  debts  to  eat  up  the  greater  part  of  it. 

They  had  now  another  hope  to  lure  them ;  new  proofs 
to  read,  and  in  due  time,  new  reviews.  But  it  would  be 
fall  before  they  could  expect  more  money  from  the  book, 
and  meantime  there  was  still  the  problem  of  the  sum 
mer.  So,  as  usual,  Thyrsis  was  plotting  and  planning, 
groping  about  him  and  trying  one  desperate  scheme 
after  another ;  his  head  was  like  a  busy  workshop,  from 
which  came  every  hour  new  plans,  new  expedients,  new 
experiments.  And  meanwhile,  of  course,  deep  down  in 
his  soul  there  was  forming  the  new  work,  that  some  day 
would  emerge  and  take  possession  of  him,  driving  every 
thing  else  from  his  consciousness. 

People  would  repeat  to  him,  over  and  over,  their 
dreary  formula — "Get  a  position!  Get  a  position!" 
And  patiently,  unwearyingly,  Thyrsis  would  set  himself 
to  explain  to  them  what  it  was  like  to  be  inspired.  It 
was  not  perversity  upon  his  part,  it  was  not  conceit ;  it 


410  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

was  no  more  these  than  it  was  laziness.  It  was  some 
thing  that  was  in  him — something  that  he  had  not  put 
there  himself,  something  that  he  could  not  take  out  of 
himself;  a  thing  that  took  possession  of  him,  without  any 
intention  upon  his  part,  without  any  permission ;  a  thing 
that  required  him  to  do  certain  acts,  and  that  tore  him 
to  pieces  if  he  did  not  do  them.  And  how  should  he  be 
blamed  because  he  could  not  do  as  other  men — because 
he  could  not  take  care  of  himself,  nor  even  of  his  wife 
and  child?  Because  he  could  not  have  any  rights,  be 
cause  he  could  not  possess  the  luxuries  of  manhood 
and  self-respect?  Because,  in  short,  he  was  cast  out 
into  the  gutter  for  every  dog  to  snarl  at  and  for  every 
loafer  to  spurn?  Could  it  be  that  in  this  whole  civili 
zation,  with  its  wealth  and  power,  its  culture  and  learn 
ing,  its  sciences  and  arts  and  religions — there  was  not 
to  be  found  one  single  man  or  woman  who  could  recog 
nize  such  a  state  of  affairs,  and  realize  what  it  meant? 

§  6.  ABOUT  this  time  Thyrsis  thought  of  another 
plan.  Perhaps  he  might  get  some  one  to  publish  the 
play  in  book  form — that  would  bring  him  a  little  money, 
and  possibly  also  it  might  help  him  to  interest  some 
other  manager  or  actor.  So  he  took  the  manuscript 
to  his  friend  Mr.  Ardsley,  who  told  him  it  would  not 
sell,  and  then  gave  him  another  lecture  upon  his  folly 
in  not  having  written  the  "practical"  novel ;  and  then 
he  took  it  to  the  publisher  for  whom  Prof.  Osborne 
acted  as  reader.  So  he  had  another  conference  with 
that  representative  of  authority. 

"I'll  get  him  some  day,"  Thyrsis  had  said  to  him 
self,  after  their  last  interview;  and  he  found  that  he 
had  almost  "got"  him  now.  There  was  no  chance  of 
the  play's  selling,  said  the  professor,  and  therefore 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  411 

no  recommending  it  for  publication ;  but  it  was  indeed 
a  remarkable  piece  of  work — one  might  possibly  say 
that  it  was  a  great  piece  of  work. 

To  which  the  author  responded,  "Why  can't  one 
say  that  surely?" 

"I'm  not  quite  sure,"  said  the  other,  "whether  your 
violinist  is  a  genius,  or  only  thinks  he  is." 

Thyrsis  pondered  this.  "That's  rather  an  important 
question,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  admitted  the  other. 

"There  ought  to  be  some  way  of  deciding  such  a 
question  definitely." 

"Yes,  there  ought  to  be." 

"But  there  isn't?" 

"No — I'm  afraid  there  isn't.  We  know  too  little 
about  genius  as  yet/' 

"But,  professor,"  said  Thyrsis,  "you  are  a  critic — 
you  write  books  of  criticism.  And  that's  the  one  ques 
tion  a  critic  has  to  answer." 

"Yes,  I  know,"  said  Prof.  Osborne. 

"And  yet,  when  you  face  the  issue,  you  give  up." 

"It  has  generally  taken  a  long  time  to  decide  such  a 
matter,"  was  the  professor's  reply. 

"Yes,  it  has,"  said  the  other;  "and  meantime  the 
man  is  starved  out." 

There  was  a  pause.  "You  have  never  had  any  such 
experience  yourself?"  asked  Thyrsis.  "Of  inspiration, 
I  mean." 

"No,"  was  the  answer.     "I  couldn't  pretend  to." 

"So  your  judgments  are  never  from  first-hand  knowl 
edge?" 

The  professor  hesitated.  "I  am  dealing  with  you 
frankly —  '  he  began. 

"I  know,"  said  Thyrsis,  "and  I  appreciate  that.    You 


412  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

understand  that  it's  an  important  point  for  me  to 
get  clear.  I've  felt  that  all  along  about  you — I've  felt 
it  about  so  many  others  who  set  themselves  against  me. 
And  yet  I  have  to  bear  the  burden  of  their  condemna 
tion-  -" 

"I  never  condemned  you,"  interposed  the  other. 

"Ah,  but  you  did!"  cried  Thyrsis.  "You  told  me 
that  I  knew  less  about  writing  than  anyone  in  your 
class !  And  you  spoke  as  one  who  had  authority." 

"But  you  had  given  no  indications  in  the  class 
room " 

"I  know!  I  know!  I  tried  to  get  you  to  see  the 
reason.  I  wanted  to  create  literature;  and  you  set  me 
down  with  a  lot  of  formulas — you  told  me  to  write 
about  'The  Duty  of  the  College  Man  to  Support 
Athletics!'" 

"It's  difficult  to  see,"  began  Prof.  Osborne,  "how 
•we  could  teach  college  boys  to  create  literature " 

"At  least,"  said  the  other,  "you  need  not  follow  a 
method  which  would  make  it  impossible  for  one  of  them 
to  create  literature  if  he  had  it  in  him." 

"Does  it  seem  to  you  as  bad  as  that?"  asked  the 
professor,  a  little  disturbed. 

"It  truly  does,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"But  what  would  you  say  we  could  do  ?" 

To  which  the  boy  replied,  "You  might  try  to  get 
your  pupils  to  feel  one  deep  emotion  about  life,  or  to 
think  one  worth-while  thought ;  then  they  might  stand 
a  chance  of  knowing  how  it  feels  to  write." 

§  7.  THYRSIS  was  still  reading  in  the  papers  and 
magazines  of  philanthropists  and  public-spirited  citi 
zens  ;  and  he  was  still  sitting  down  to  write  them  and 
^explain  his  plight.  He  would  beg  them  to  believe  that 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  413 

he  wanted  nothing  but  a  bare  living ;  and  he  would  send 
copies  of  his  books  or  articles  or  manuscripts,  and  ask 
these  people  to  read  them.  And  about  this  time  an  un 
usual  thing  happened — one  of  these  philanthropists  an 
swered  his  letter.  He  wrote  that  he  did  not  agree  with 
Thyrsis'  ideas,  by  any  means,  but  appreciated  the  power 
of  his  writing,  and  was  certain  that  he  had  a  career  be 
fore  him.  Whereupon  Thyrsis  made  haste  to  follow  up 
his  advantage,  and  wrote  another  letter — one  of  the 
most  intense  and  impassioned  that  he  ever  composed  in 
his  life. 

He  told  about  the  new  book  he  was  dreaming.  For 
years  he  had  read  his  country's  history,  and  lived  in 
it  and  thrilled  with  it.  Especially  had  he  read  the 
Civil  War ;  and  now  he  was  planning  a  book  that  should 
hold  the  War,  and  all  the  meanings  of  the  War,  as  a 
wine-cup  holds  the  rich  flavors  and  aromas  of  the  grape. 
A  titan  struggle  it  had  been,  the  birth-agony  of  a  na 
tion  ;  and  it  was  a  thing  to  be  contemplated  with  amaze 
ment,  that  it  should  have  produced  so  little  in  the  way 
of  art.  Half  a  dozen  poems  there  were;  but  of  novels 
not  one  above  the  grade  of  juvenile  fiction. 

What  Thyrsis  was  planning  was  a  new  form;  a 
series  of  swift  visions,  of  glimpses  into  the  very  heart 
of  the  nation's  agony.  He  described  some  of  the  scenes 
that  were  haunting  him  and  driving  him,  The  winter's 
night  in  the  ditches  in  front  of  Marye's  Heights,  when 
the  dead  and  dying  lay  piled  in  windrows,  and  the  sou*! 
of  a  people  sobbed  in  despair !  The  night  on  the  field 
of  Gettysburg,  when  the  young  soldier  lay  wounded, 
but  rapt  in  his  vision,  seeing  the  hosts  of  the  victorious 
future  defiling  upon  that  hallowed  ground  !  The  ghastly 
scenes  in  Andersonville,  and  the  escape,  and  the  long 
journey  filled  with  perils ;  and  the  siege  of  Petersburg, 


:ii  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  the  surrender ;  and  last  of  all  the  ecstasy  of  the 
dying  man  in  the  capital,  when  the  grim,  war-worn 
legions  were  tramping  for  two  days  through  the  city. 
Such,  wrote  Thyrsis,  was  the  book  that  he  wished  to 
compose,  and  that  was  being  stifled  in  him  for  the  lack 
of  two  or  three  hundred  dollars. 

Upon  the  receipt  of  this  letter  the  philanthropist 
wrote  again,  suggesting  that  the  poet  come  to  see  him 
and  talk  things  over.  He  sent  the  price  of  a  railroad 
ticket  to  Boston ;  and  so  Thyrsis  made  the  acquaintance 
of  a  new  world — one  might  almost  say  of  a  whole  new 
system  of  worlds. 

For  here  was  the  Athens  of  America,  the  hub  of  the 
universe.  In  Boston  they  worshipped  culture,  they  lived 
in  literature  and  art  and  the  transcendental  excellences ; 
and  by  the  way  of  showing  that  there  was  no  snobbery 
in  them,  they  opened  the  gates  of  their  mcst  august 
mansions  to  this  soul-sick  poet,  and  invited  him  to  tea. 

Thyrsis  got  a  strange  impression  among  these  people, 
who  were  living  upon  their  knees  before  the  shrine  of 
their  own  literary  history.  One  was  treading  here  upon 
holy  ground;  in  these  very  houses  had  dwelt  immortal 
writers — their  earthly  forms  had  rested  in  these  chairs, 
and  their  auras  yet  haunted  the  dim  religious  light  of 
these  drawing-rooms.  There  were  old  people  who  had 
known  them  in  the  flesh,  and  could  tell  anecdotes  about 
them — to  which  one  listened  in  reverent  awe ;  at  every 
gathering  one  met  people  who  were  writing  biographies 
and  memoirs  of  them,  or  editing  their  letters  and  jour 
nals,  or  writing  essays  and  appreciations,  criticisms 
and  commentaries  and  catalogs  and  bibliographies.  And 
to  be  worthy  of  the  visitations  of  such  hallowed  influ 
ences,  one  must  guard  one's  mind  as  a  temple,  a  place 
of  silences  and  serenities,  to  which  no  vulgar  things 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  415 

could  penetrate;  one  excluded  all  the  uproar  of  these 
days  of  undisciplined  egotism — above  all  things  else 
one  preserved  an  attitude  of  aloofness  from  that  which 
presumed  to  call  itself  "literature"  in  such  degenerate 
times. 

To  have  become  acquainted  with  these  high  standards 
was  perhaps  worth  the  rent  of  a  room  and  the  cost  of 
some  food  and  clean  collars.  So  Thyrsis  reflected  when, 
after  his  week  of  waiting,  he  had  his  interview  with  the 
benevolent  philanthropist,  who  explained  to  him,  at 
great  length,  how  charity  had  the  effect  of  weakening 
the  springs  of  character,  and  destroying  those  quali 
ties  of  self-reliance  and  independence  which  were  the 
most  precious  things  in  a  man. 

§  8.  IT  was  a  curious  coincidence,  one  that  seemed 
almost  symbolic — that  Thyrsis  should  have  gone  from 
the  Brahmins  of  Boston  to  the  Socialists  of  the  East 
Side! 

In  one  of  the  publishing-houses  he  visited,  Thyrsis 
had  met  a  young  man  who  gave  him  a  Socialist  maga 
zine  to  read ;  as  the  magazine  was  published  in  the  next 
building,  Thyrsis  went  in  and  met  the  editor.  About 
this  time  they  were  crowning  a  new  king  in  England, 
and  Thyrsis,  who  had  no  use  for  kings,  wrote  a  sar 
castic  poem  which  the  Socialist  editor  published  free  of 
charge.  And  so  the  boy  discovered  a  new  way  in  which 
he  could  relieve  his  feelings. 

"I  see  what  you  want,"  he  admitted,  in  his  arguments 
with  this  editor;  "and  it's  the  same  thing  as  I  want — 
every  man  with  any  sense  must  see  that,  in  the  ultimate 
outcome,  all  this  capital  will  be  owned  by  the  public 
and  not  by  private  individuals.  But  what  I  object  to 
is  the  way  you  go  at  it.  The  industrial  process  is  a 


416  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

necessary  thing ;  it  is  drilling  and  disciplining  the 
workers.  They  are  not  yet  fitted  for  the  responsibility 
of  managing  the  world." 

"But,"  asked  the  editor,  "what's  to  be  the  sign  when 
they  are  fitted?" 

"When  they  have  been  educated,"  Thyrsis  answered. 

To  which  the  editor  responded,  "Who  is  to  educate 
them,  if  we  don't?" 

That  was  an  interesting  point ;  and  Thyrsis  found 
little  by  little  that  a  new  light  was  dawning  upon  him. 
He  had  somehow  conceived  of  industrial  evolution  as 
something  vast  and  intangible  and  mechanical,  some 
thing  that  went  on  independent  of  men,  and  that  could 
not  be  hurried  or  delayed.  What  this  editor  pointed 
out  was  that  the  process  was  a  definite  one,  that  it  went 
on  in  the  minds  of  men,  and  involved  human  effort — of 
which  the  publishing  of  Socialist  literature  was  a  most 
essential  part. 

"You  ought  to  hear  Darrell,"  said  the  man ;  and  a 
few  days  later  he  w'rote  Thyrsis  a  note,  asking  him  to 
go  to  a  hall  over  on  the  East  Side  that  evening. 

Thyrsis  went,  and  found  a  working-men's  meeting- 
room,  ill-lighted  and  ill-ventilated,  with  perhaps  two 
hundred  people  in  it.  The  chairman  introduced  the 
speaker  of  the  evening;  and  so  Thyrsis  got  his  first 
glimpse  of  Henry  Darrell. 

He  was  something  over  forty  years  of  age,  slight  of 
build ;  his  face  was  pale  to  the  point  of  ghostliness,  and 
this  impression  was  heightened  by  a  jet  black  mustache 
and  beard.  One's  first  thought  was  that  this  man  was 
no  stranger  to  suffering. 

He  was  not  a  good  speaker,  in  the  conventional  sense ; 
he  fumbled  for  words,  and  repeated  himself — and  yet 
from  his  first  sentence  Thyrsis  found  himself  listening 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  417 

spellbound.  The  voice  went  through  him  like  the  toll 
of  a  bell ;  never  in  all  his  life  had  he  heard  a  speaker 
who  put  such  a  burden  of  anguish  into  his  words — 
who  gave  such  a  sense  of  gigantic  issues,  of  age-long 
destinies  hanging  in  the  balance,  of  world-embracing 
hopes  and  powers  struggling  to  be  born.  Here  was 
a  prophet  who  carried  in  his  soul  the  future  of  the  race ; 
who  in  the  sudden  flashes  of  his  vision,  in  the  swift 
rushes  of  his  passionate  pleadings,  evoked  from  the 
deeps  of  the  consciousness  forces  that  one  contemplated 
with  terror — confronted  one  with  martyrdoms  and 
agonies  and  despairs. 

"Revolution"  was  his  title;  he  pictured  modern  civi 
lization  as  it  presented  itself  to  the  proletarian  man — 
a  gigantic  Moloch,  to  which  human  lives  were  fed,  a 
monster  from  whose  dominion  there  was  no  deliverance, 
even  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  He  pictured 
accident,  disease  and  death,  unemployment  and  starva 
tion,  child-labor,  prostitution,  war;  he  was  the  voice 
of  the  dispossessed  of  the  earth,  the  man  beneath  the 
machine,  ground  up  body,  mind  and  soul  in  this  "world 
wide  mill  of  economic  might".  And  he  showed  how  this 
man  dragged  down  with  him  all  society ;  how  the  chain 
that  bound  the  slave  was  fastened  also  to  the  master — 
so  that  from  the  poverty  and  oppression  and  degrada 
tion  of  this  "downmost  man"  came  all  the  ulcers  that 
festered  in  the  social  body.  He  saw  the  great  economic 
machine  grinding  on  day  and  night,  the  mighty  forces 
rushing  to  their  culmination.  He  saw  the  toiling 
millions  pressed  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  mire;  he 
saw  their  blind,  convulsive  struggles  for  deliverance; 
he  saw  over  them  the  gigantic  slave-driver  with  his 
thousand-lashed  whip — the  capitalist  state,  class-owned 
and  class-administered — backed  by  the  capitalist  church 


418  LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE 

and  the  capitalist  press  and  capitalist  "public  senti 
ment".  So  the  hopes  of  the  people  went  down  in  blood, 
•and  reaction  sat  enthroned.  The  nations,  ridden  by 
-despotisms,  and  whirled  into  senseless  wars,  ran  the  old 
course  of  militarism,  imperialism,  barbarism;  and  so 
-civilization  slid  back  yet  again  into  the  melting-pot ! 

Thyrsis  had  never  heard  such  a  speech  as  this  in  his 
life.  When  it  was  over,  he  went  up  to  the  platform, 
where  Darrell  sat,  looking  more  exhausted  and  pain- 
driven  than  ever ;  and  in  a  few  hesitating  words  he  told 
of  his  interest,  and  asked  for  the  speaker's  address, 
that  he  might  write  to  him.  And  that  night  he  posted 
a  letter,  introducing  himself  as  a  young  writer,  who 
felt  impelled  to  learn  more  about  Darrell's  ideas. 

In  reply  came  a  note  from  the  other,  asking  him  to 
dine  with  him ;  and  Thyrsis  answered  accepting. 

Then,  as  chance  would  have  it,  he  mentioned  the  cir 
cumstance  to  his  mother.  "Darrell!"  she  cried.  "You 
don't  mean  Henry  Darrell!" 

"Yes,"  said  Thyrsis.     "Why?" 

"And  you  would  meet  that  man?" 

"Why  not?"  he  asked,  perplexed. 

"Haven't  you  read  anything  about.him  in  the  papers  ? 
That  monster !" 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"A  man  who  deserted  his  wife  and  children,  and  left 
them  to  starve,  and  ran  away  with  some  rich  woman !" 

Thyrsis  recollected  vaguely  some  sensational  head 
lines,  about  the  clergyman  and  college  professor  who 
had  done  the  shocking  things  his  mother  spoke  of,  and 
was  now  a  social  outcast,  and  a  preacher  of  anarchy 
and  revolution.  He  recalled  also  that  there  had  been 
&  woman,  beautiful  and  richly-dressed,  with  Darrell  at 
the  meeting. 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE 

The  boy  was  not  disturbed  by  all  this,  for  he  had 
long  ago  made  up  his  mind  that  every  man  had  to  work 
out  his  own  sex-problems ;  in  fact,  his  first  impulse  was- 
to  admire  a  man  who  had  had  the  courage  to  face  the 
world  upon  such  an  issue.  But  he  was  sorry  he  had 
mentioned  it  to  his  mother,  for  she  wept  bitterly  when 
she  found  that  he  meant  to  accept  the  invitation.  That 
was  the  culmination  of  her  life's  defeat — that  her  son,. 
who  had  been  designed  for  a  bishop,  should  be  going  to> 
sit  at  table  with  Henry  Darrell  and  his  paramour ! 

§  9.  THYRSIS  went  to  the  apartment-hotel  where 
Darrell  lived,  and  was  introduced  to  the  beautiful  lady 
as  Mrs.  Darrell,  and  they  went  down  to  the  dining- 
room — where  he  noticed  that  everyone  turned  to  stare 
at  them  as  they  entered.  It  made  him  feel  that  he 
must  be  doing  something  quite  desperate;  and  yet  it 
was  not  easy  to  imagine  any  wickedness  of  the  man  op 
posite  to  him — his  voice  was  so  kind,  and  his  smile  so* 
gentle,  and  his  whole  aspect  so  appealing.  He  was* 
dressed  in  black,  and  wore  a  soft  black  bow  at  his* 
throat,  which  made  still  more  conspicuous  the  pallor 
of  his  face ;  Thyrsis  had  never  met  a  man  he  took  to< 
more  quickly — there  was  something  about  him  that  was 
like  a  little  child,  calling  for  affection  and  sympathy. 

Yet,  also,  there  was  the  mind  of  a. thinker.  He  was 
a  man  of  culture,  in  the  most  vital  sense  of  the  word  £ 
he  had  swept  the  heavens  of  thought  with  a  powerful 
telescope — had  travelled,  and  knew  many  languages,  and 
their  literatures  and  arts.  He  had  tested  them  all  by 
a  strong  acid  of  his  own ;  so  that  to  talk  with  him  was- 
to  discover  the  feet  of  clay  of  one's  idols. 

He  spoke  of  Dante  and  Angelo,  who  were  two  of  his 
heroes ;  he  told  of  great  experiences  among  the  latter's 


420  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

titan  frescos.  He  spoke  of  Mazzini,  whose  greatness 
as  a  writer  the  world  had  yet  to  appreciate ;  he  spoke 
also  of  Wagner,  whose  music  he  valued  less  than  his 
critical  and  polemical  work.  He  told  of  modern  artists, 
both  in  Germany  and  Italy — revolutionary  forces  of 
whom  Thyrsis  had  never  heard  at  all.  The  day  must 
^come,  said  Darrell,  when  Americans  would  discover  the 
great  movements  of  contemporary  thought,  and  realize 
their  own  provincialness.  America  thought  of  itself  as 
"the  land  of  the  free",  and  that  made  it  hard  to  teach. 
It  was  obvious  enough  that  there  had  never  been  any 
real  freedom  in  America — only  government  by  proper 
tied  classes.  The  Revolution  had  been  a  rebellion  of 
country  gentlemen  and  city  merchants ;  as  one  might 
know  from  the  "constitution"  they  had  adopted — one 
of  the  greatest  barriers  to  human  progress  ever  devised. 
And  so  with  the  Civil  War,  which  to  Darrell  was  one  of 
the  deeds  of  the  newly-risen  monster  of  Capitalism. 

They  went  upstairs  again,  and  Thyrsis  found  an 
other  man  seated  in  the  drawing-room.  He  was  intro 
duced  by  the  name  of  Paret,  and  Thyrsis  recognized 
him  as  the  editor  of  "The  Beacon",  a  magazine  of  which 
he  had  chanced  upon  a  copy  some  time  before.  It  was 
the  first  Socialist  publication  he  had  ever  seen,  and  it 
had  repelled  him  because  its  editor  had  printed  his  own 
picture  in  a  conspicuous  place,  and  also  because  in  his 
leading  editorial  he  had  dealt  flippantly  with  an  eminent 
reformer  and  philanthropist  for  whom  Thyrsis  had  a 
profound  respect. 

But  here  was  the  editor  himself — not  merely  his 
photograph:  a  little  man,  clad  in  evening  dress,  very 
neat  and  dapper.  He  had  a  black  beard,  trimmed  to 
a  point,  and  also  a  sarcastic  smile,  and  he  impressed 
Thyrsis  as  a  drawing-room  edition  of  Mephistopheles. 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  421 

He  lounged  at  ease  in  a  big  chair,  not  troubling  to 
talk ;  save  that  every  now  and  then  he  would  punctuate 
the  discussion  with  some  droll  reflection  that  stuck  in 
one's  mind  like  a  burr. 

Some  one  spoke  of  certain  evangelists  who  were  con 
ducting  a  temperance  campaign  among  the  workers  in 
the  steel-mills.  Said  Paret:  "If  I  had  to  live  in  hell, 
I'm  sure  I'd  rather  be  drunk  than  sober !"  And  a  little 
later  Thyrsis  spoke  of  a  novel  he  had  been  reading, 
which  set  out  to  solve  the  problem  of  "capital  and 
labor".  Its  solution  seemed  to  be  for  the  handsome 
young  leader  of  the  union  to  marry  the  daughter  of  the 
capitalist;  and  Paret  remarked,  with  his  dry  smile,  "No 
doubt  if  the  capitalists  and  their  daughters  are  willing, 
the  union-leaders  will  come  to  the  scratch."  Again, 
Darrell  was  telling  about  the  ten  years'  struggle  he 
had  waged  to  waken  the  Church  to  the  great  issue  of 
the  time ;  and  how  at  last  he  had  given  up  in  despair. 
Paret  remarked,  "For  my  part,  I  never  try  to  talk 
economics  with  preachers.  When  you  talk  to  a  business 
man,  he  understands  a  business  proposition,  and  you 
can  get  somewhere ;  but  when  you  talk  with  a  preacher, 
and  you  think  he's  been  understanding  you,  you  find 
that  all  the  time  he's  been  thinking  what  Moses  would 
have  said  about  it." 

There  came  other  guests:  a  German,  hard-fisted, 
bullet-headed — editor  of  an  East  Side  labor-paper. 
Some  one  spoke  of  working-men  losing  their  votes 
through  being  unemployed  and  cast  adrift ;  and  Thyrsis 
remembered  this  man's  grim  comment,  "They  lose  their 
votes,  but  they  don't  lose  their  voices !"  There  came  a 
young  man,  fair  as  an  Antinous,  who  with  his  verbal 
battering-ram  shook  the  institutions  of  society  so  as 
to  frighten  even  the  author  of  "The  Higher  Canni- 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

/balism".  There  came  also  a  poetess,  whose  work  he  had 
seen  in  the  magazines,  and  with  her  a  Russian  youth 
who  had  come  to  study  the  thought  of  America,  and 
was  now  going  home,  because  America  had  no  thought. 
Thyrsis  had  a  good  deal  of  patriotism  left  in  him,  and 
anight  have  been  angered  by  this  stripling's  contempt ; 
jfout  the  stripling  spoke  with  such  quiet  assurance,  and 
his  contempt  was  so  boundless  as  to  frighten  one. 
*"These  people,"  he  said — "they  simply  do  not  know 
what  the  intellectual  life  means !" 

When  Thyrsis  went  home  that  evening,  he  carried 
with  him  new  ideas  to  ponder ;  also  some  of  Darrell's 
pamphlets  and  speeches — the  product  of  his  ten  years' 
•struggle  to  make  the  teachings  of  Christ  of  some 
.authority  in  the  Christian  Church.  Thyrsis  sat  up  late, 
and  read  one  of  these  pamphlets,  an  indictment  of 
Capitalism  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  artist  and 
spiritual  creator.  It  was  a  magnificent  piece  of  writ 
ing;  it  came  to  Thyrsis  like  an  echo  out  of  his  own 
life.  So,  before  he  slept  that  night  he  had  written  a 
letter  to  Darrell,  telling  of  his  struggles  and  his  de 
feats.  "I  do  not  ask  you  to  help  me,"  he  wrote.  "I 
ask  you  to  read  my  work,  and  decide  if  that  be  worth 
saving.  For  ashamed  as  I  am  to  say  it,  I  am  at  the 
end  of  my  resources,  and  if  some  help  does  not  come,  I 
do  not  know  what  will  become  of  me." 

Thyrsis  had  now  tried  all  varieties  of  the  great  and 
successful  of  the  earth — the  publishers  and  editors  and 
authors,  the  college  professors  and  clergymen,  the 
statesmen  and  capitalists  and  philanthropists.  And 
now,  for  the  first  time,  he  tried  the  Socialists.  He 
trembled  when  he  opened  Darrell's  reply.  Could  it  be 
that  this  man  would  be  like  all  the  rest? 

But  no,  he  was  different !    "Dear  Brother :"  he  wrote. 


THE  TORTURE-HOUSE 

"I  understand  what  you  have  told  me,  and  I  appreciate 
your  position.  Send  me  your  manuscripts  at  once ;  I. 
leave  to-morrow  for  a  lecture-trip,  and  on  my  way  I  will 
read  everything,  and  let  you  hear  from  me  on  my  re 
turn.  In  the  meantime,  I  should  add  that  I  am  helping; 
two  Socialist  publications,  and  a  good  many  individuals 
too,  and  that  my  resources  have  been  absurdly  exag 
gerated  in  the  public  prints.  I  say  this,  that  you  may 
not  overestimate  what  I  might  possibly  be  able  to  do."' 

§  10.  So  Thyrsis  sent  a  manuscript  of  his  play,  and 
a  copy  of  his  first  novel,  and  a  set  of  proofs  of  "The 
Hearer  of  Truth" ;  and  then  for  a  couple  of  weeks  he 
waited  in  suspense  and  dread.  He  could  not  see  how  a 
man  like  Henry  Darrell  could  fail  to  appreciate  his 
work ;  but  on  the  other  hand,  after  so  many  disappoint 
ments  and  rebuffs,  how  could  he  bring  himself  to  be 
lieve  that  any  one  would  really  give  him  aid?  -* 

At  last  came  a  second  letter;  a  letter  full  of  warm 
hearted  sympathy — pointing  out  the  faults  of  imma 
turity  in  his  work,  but  also  recognizing  its  real  merits. 
It  closed  with  this  all-important  sentence :  "I  will  do 
what  I  can  to  help  you,  so  come  and  let  us  talk  it 
over." 

Thyrsis  went;  and  as  they  sat  in  his  study,  Darrell 
put  his  arm  about  him,  and  told  him  a  little  of  his  own 
career.  He  had  begun  life  as  a  street-waif,  a  newsboy 
and  bootblack;  and  once  when  he  was  ill,  he  had  gone 
to  a  drug-store  for  help,  and  the  druggist  had  given 
him  a  poison  by  mistake,  so  that  all  his  life  thereafter 
he  had  more  sick  days  than  well.  He  told  how,  at  an 
early  age,  he  had  gone  to  a  country  college  to  seek 
an  education  as  a  divinity-student ;  he  had  arrived, 
weary  and  footsore,  and  with  his  last  cent  had  bought 


424  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

a  post-card  to  let  his  mother  know  that  he  was  safe. 
He  told  how,  as  a  clergyman  and  college  professor, 
the  gospel  of  the  time  had  come  to  him;  how  he  had 
preached  and  labored,  amid  persecution  and  obloquy, 
until  he  had  come  to  realize  that  the  Church  was  a 
dead  sepulchre ;  and  how  at  last  he  had  thrown  every 
thing  to  the  winds,  and  given  himself  to  the  working- 
class  political  movement. 

Then  Thyrsis,  scrupulous  as  ever,  said,  "I  know 
nothing  about  Socialism.  I  mean  to  study  it;  but  I 
might  not  come  to  believe  in  it — how  can  I  tell?  I 
would  not  want  you  to  help  me  under  any  misappre 
hension." 

At  which  the  other  smiled  gently.  "I  am  working 
for  the  truth,"  he  said. 

They  talked  about  Thyrsis  and  his  needs.  Presum 
ably,  he  said,  he  would  have  money  from  his  new  book 
in  the  fall,  but  meantime  he  wanted  to  take  his  family 
into  the  country.  He  could  live  on  thirty  dollars  a 
month;  it  would  be  a  matter  of v  some  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars.  Darrell  said  he  would  give  him  this ;  and 
Thyrsis  sat  there,  powerless  to  thank  him,  his  voice 
trembling,  and  a  mist  of  tears  in  his  eyes. 

He  went 'on  to  tell  his  friend  of  the  work  that  he 
meant  to  do.  Darrell  had  said  that  to  him  the  Civil 
War  was  a  crime ;  but  Thyrsis  did  not  know  what  he 
meant  by  that.  "I  believe  in  my  country !"  he  said. 
"It  has  tried  for  high  things — and  it  will  come  to  them ! 
I  know  that  it  can  be  thrilled  and  roused,  and  made  to 
see  the  shame  into  which  it  is  fallen." 

Darrell  pressed  his  arm,  and  answered,  with  a  smile, 
"I  won't  argue  with  you  about  the  War  •  you  go  ahead 
and  write  your  book!" 

So  Thyrsis  went  home  to  Cor}Tdon,  as  one  who  brings 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  425 

a  reprieve  to  a  prisoner  under  sentence  of  death.  Such 
a  deliverance  as  it  was  to  them !  And  such  transports 
of  relief  and  gratitude  as  they  experienced!  He  sang 
the  praises  of  Darrell,  and  of  the  new  friends  he  had 
made  at  Darrell's ;  also  he  brought  an  invitation  for 
Corydon  to  come  with  him  to  an  evening  reception  the 
next  week.  They  were  anxious  to  meet  her,  he  said; 
and  Corydon  was  anxious  to  go. 

But,  alas,  this  did  not  work  out  according  to  expecta 
tions.  Thyrsis  discovered  now  what  his  wife  had  meant 
when  she  wrote  that  suffering  and  humiliation  were 
breaking  down  her  character.  She  could  not  bear  to 
meet  intellectual  people,  to  take  part  in  the  competition 
of  their  life.  For  the  most  part  these  were  men  and 
women  of  intense  personalities,  absorbed  in  their  own 
ideas,  keenly  critical,  and  not  very  merciful  to  any  sort 
of  weakness.  And  Corydon  was  morbidly  aware  of  her 
own  lack  of  accomplishments,  and  acutely  sensitive  as 
to  what  others  thought  about  her.  A  strange  figure 
she  must  have  made  in  any  one's  drawing-room — with, 
the  old  dress  she  had  fixed  up,  and  the  lace-collar  she 
had  borrowed  for  the  occasion,  and  the  sad  face  with 
the  large  dark  eyes.  The  talk  of  the  company  ran  ta 
politics  ;  and  Corydon  had  nothing  to  say  about  politics. 
She  could  only  sit  in  a  corner  while  Thyrsis  talked,  ancjf 
suffer  agonies  of  humiliation. 

To  make  matters  worse,  there  came  a  literary  lion 
that  evening ;  one  of  the  few  modern  writers  whose  books 
Corydon  knew  and  loved.  But  when  they  were  intro 
duced,  he  scarcely  looked  at  her ;  he  went  on  talking 
to  an  East  Side  poetess  whose  opinions  were  fluent  and 
ready.  So  Corydon  found  herself  shunted  into  a  cor 
ner  with  an  unknown  old  lady.  It  was  one  of  Cory- 
don's  peculiarities  that  she  abhorred  old  ladies ;  and 


426  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

this  one  questioned  her  about  the  feeding  of  infants, 
and  told  her  that  she  was  ill-equipped  for  the  responsi 
bilities  of  motherhood! 

On  her  way  home  she  poured  out  her  bitterness  to 
Thyrsis.  "I  can  see  exactly  how  it  is,"  she  said.  "They 
all  think  you've  married  a  pretty  face!" 

"You  haven't  given  them  much  chance  to  think  other 
wise,"  he  pleaded. 

"They  don't  want  any  chance,"  she  exclaimed. 
"They've  got  it  all  settled !  You  are  the  rising  light, 
which  is  to  astonish  the  world — and  I'm  your  youthful 
blunder.  I  stay  at  home  and  take  care  of  the  baby,  and 
they  all  feel  sorry  for  you." 

"Do  you  want  them  to  feel  sorry  for  you?"  he 
asked. 

To  which  Corydon  answered,  "I  don't  want  them  to 
know  about  me  at  all.  I  want  to  get  away,  and  stay 
by  myself,  and  get  back  my  self-respect."  And  so  it 
was  decided  that  in  a  couple  of  weeks  more — the  first  of 
April — they  would  shake  the  dust  of  the  city  from  their 
feet.  They  sent  for  their  tent  and  other  goods,  and 
began  inquiring  about  a  place  to  camp. 

§11.  A  FEW  days  more  passed;  and  then,  one  Sun 
day  morning,  Thyrsis'  mother  came  to  him  in  tears, 
with  a  copy  of  a  newspaper  "magazine-supplement"  in 
her  hand. 

"Look  at  this  !"  she  cried ;  and  Thyrsis  stared. 

There  was  a  full-page  article,  with  many  illustra 
tions,  and  a  headline  two  inches  deep — "Henry  Dar- 
rell  to  found  Free-Love  Colony !  Ex-college  professor 
and  clergyman  buys  farm  to  teach  his  doctrines !" 
There  was  a  picture  of  Darrell,  standing  upon  a  ladder 
and  nailing  up  an  announcement  of  his  defiance  to  the 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  427 

institution  of  marriage ;  and  there  were  pictures  of 
his  wife  and  child,  and  of  the  farm  he  had  bought,  and 
a  long  account  of  the  colony  which  he  was  organizing, 
and  in  which  he  meant  to  preach  and  practice  his  ideas 
of  "free  love". 

Thyrsis  was  half  dazed.  "I  don't  believe  it!"  he 
cried ;  whereat  his  mother  wrung  her  hands. 

"Not  believe  it!"  she  exclaimed.  "Why,  the  paper 
even  gives  the  price  he  paid  for  the  place !" 

So  Thyrsis  took  the  article  and  went  to  see  Henry 
Darrell  again ;  and  there  followed  one  of  the  most  pain 
ful  experiences  of  his  life. 

He  found  his  friend  like  a  man  blasted  by  a  stroke 
of  lightning.  His  very  physical  appearance  was 
altered ;  his  voice  shook  and  his  eyes  were  wild,  and  he 
paced  the  room,  his  whole  aspect  one  cry  of  agony. 

He  pointed  Thyrsis  to  a  lot  of  clippings  that  lay 
upon  the  table — the  first  editorial  comments  upon  this 
new  pronouncement.  There  was  one  from  an  evening 
paper,  which  had  close  upon  a  million  circulation,  and 
had  devoted  its  whole  editorial  page  to  a  scathing  de 
nunciation,  in  which  it  was  declared  that  "Prof.  Dar- 
rell's  morality  is  that  of  the  higher  apes." 

"Think  of  it !"  the  man  cried.  "And  the  thing  will 
go  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other !" 

"But" — gasped  Thyrsis,  bewildered — "then  it  is  not 
true?" 

"True?"  cried  Darrell.  "True?  How  can  you  ask 
me?" 

"But— the  colony !    What  is  it  to  be?" 

"There  is  not  going  to  be  any  colony.  I  never 
dreamed  of  such  a  thing!" 

"And  haven't  you  bought  any  farm?" 


428  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"My  wife  bought  a  farm,  over  a  year  ago — because 
we  wanted  to  live  in  the  country!" 

"But  then,"  gasped  Thyrsis— "how  dare  they?" 

"They  dare  anything  with  me!"  cried  the  other. 
"Anything!" 

"And  have  you  no  redress?" 

"Redress?     What  redress?" 

He  went  on  to  tell  Thyrsis  what  had  happened.  He 
and  Mrs.  Darrell  had  gone  down  to  the  farm  to  see 
about  getting  it  ready,  and  a  woman  had  come,  repre 
senting  that  she  wished  to  write  a  magazine  article  about 
"the  country-homes  of  literary  Americans".  Upon 
this  pretext  she  had  secured  a  photograph  of  the  place, 
and  of  Darrell,  and  of  his  wife  and  child.  She  had 
even  attempted  to  secure  a  photograph  of  his  wife's 
aged  mother,  who  lived  with  her,  and  who  was  involved 
in  the  affair  because  the  money  belonged  to  her.  Then 
the  woman  had  gone  away — and  a  couple  of  weeks  later 
had  come  this ! 

"And  I  thought  they  were  through  with  us !"  Dar 
rell  whispered,  with  a  shudder.  "I  thought  it  was  all 
over !" 

He  sat  in  a  chair,  with  his  face  hid  in  his  arms. 
Thyrsis  put  his  hand  upon  his  shoulder,  and  the  man 
caught  it.  "Listen,"  he  exclaimed.  "You  can  see  this 
thing  from  the  outside,  you  know  the  literary  world. 
Do  you  think  that  I  can  ever  rise  above  this?  Is  there 
any  use  in  trying?" 

"How  do  you  mean?"  Thyrsis  asked,  perplexed. 

"I  mean — is  it  worth  while  for  me  to  go  on  writing? 
Can  I  ever  have  any  influence?" 

Thyrsis  was  shocked  at  the  question — as  he  had  been 
at  the  way  Darrell  took  the  whole  thing.  He  knew 
that  his  friend  had  money  enough  to  live  comfortably ; 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  429 

and  why  should  any  sort  of  criticism  matter  to  a  man 
who   was   economically   free? 

"Brother,"  he  said,  "you  have  forgotten  your  Dante." 

"How  do  you  mean?"  asked  the  other. 

"Segui  il  tuo  corso  e  lascia  dir  le  gente!"  quoted 
Thyrsis ;  and  then  he  added,  "You  don't  seem  to  realize 
that  these  are  newspapers,  and  nobody  really  credits 
them." 

"Ah,  but  they  do !"  cried  Darrell.  "You  don't  know 
what  I  have  been  through  with !  My  oldest  friends  hare 
cut  me !  Clergymen  have  refused  to  sit  at  table  with 
me !  The  organization  that  I  gave  ten  years  of  my  life 
to  founding  has  gone  all  to  pieces.  I  have  been  utterly 
ruined — I  have  been  wiped  out,  destroyed!" 

"But,  my  dear  man,"  Thyrsis  argued,  "you  are  set 
ting  out  to  teach  a  new  doctrine,  one  that  is  abhorrent 
to  people.  And  how  can  you  expect  to  avoid  being  at 
tacked?  It  seems  to  me  that  either  you  ought  not  to 
have  done  it,  or  else  been  prepared  for  some  of  this 
uproar." 

"But  because  a  man  becomes  a  Socialist,  are  they  to 
libel  him  in  these  foul  ways?" 

"I  don't  mean  that.  It's  not  only  that  you  are  a 
Socialist,  but  that  you  have  defied  their  marriage-laws." 

"But  I  haven't !"  exclaimed  Darrell. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  asked  Thyrsis,  perplexed. 

"I  have  defied  no  law — nor  even  any  convention.  I 
have  done  everything  that  the  world  requires." 

Thyrsis  stared  at  him,  amazed.  "Why,  surely,"  he 
gasped,  "you  and — and  Mrs.  Darrell — you  are  not 
married?" 

"Married!"  exclaimed  the  other.  "We  were  married 
here  in  New  York,  by  a  regularly-ordained  clergyman !" 

Thyrsis   could   not   find   words   to   express   his   dis- 


430  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

may.  "I — I  had  no  idea  of  that!"  he  gasped.  "I 
thought " 

"You  see  the  lies !"  cried  the  other.  "Even  you  had 
swallowed  them !" 

It  took  Thyrsis  some  time  to  adjust  himself  to  this 
new  point  of  view.  He  had  thought  of  his  friend  as 
a  man  who  had  boldly  defied  the  convention  of  marriage ; 
and  instead  of  that  he  was  apparently  a  man  cowering 
under  the  lash  of  the  world's  undeserved  rage.  But  if 
so — what  an  amazing  and  incredible  thing  was  the 
mesh  of  slander  and  falsehood  in  which  he  had  been 
entangled ! 

§  12.  LITTLE  by  little  Thyrsis  drew  from  Darrcll  the 
story  of  his  marital  experience.  Before  he  had  been 
of  age,  as  a  poor  student,  he  had  boarded  with  a  woman 
many  years  his  senior,  who  had  set  out  to  lure  him  into 
marrying  her.  "I  don't  believe  that  she  ever  loved  me 
one  hour,"  he  said.  "She  had  made  up  her  mind  that 
I  was  a  man  of  brilliant  parts,  and  that  I  would  have 
worldly  success.  To  me  the  thing  was  like  an  evil 
dream — I  couldn't  realize  it.  And  I  can't  tell  you  about 
it  now — it  was  too  horrible.  She  was  older  than  I, 
and  so  different — she  was  more  like  a  man.  And 
for  twenty  years  she  held  me ;  I  had  to  stay — I  was  ut 
terly  at  her  mercy !" 

The  man's  voice  fell  to  a  whisper,  and  he  pressed 
Thyrsis'  hand  convulsively ;  there  were  tears  upon  his 
cheeks.  "I  could  not  tell  it  all  to  anyone,"  he  said. 
"It  makes  me  cry  like  a  child  to  think  of  it.  I'm  only 
getting  over  it  little  by  little — realizing  how  I  was  tor 
tured.  This  woman  had  no  interest  in  me,  intellectual 
or  spiritual;  she  brought  up  my  children  to  despise  me. 
I  would  stay  upstairs  in  my  study,  writing  sermons — 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  431 

<K 

that  was  all  my  life  !  For  twenty  years  I  waded  through 
my  own  blood !" 

Darrell  paused  to  get  control  of  himself,  and  then 
went  on. 

"One  of  my  parishioners  was  my  present  wife's 
mother.  She  was  one  of  the  old-time  abolitionists,  and 
she  was  wealthy ;  and  now,  in  her  old  age,  she  saw  the 
new  light,  and  became  a  Socialist.  This,  of  course, 
was  like  gall  to  her  family;  they  were  powers  in  the 
state — the  railroad  people,  who  control  the  legislature 
and  run  the  government.  And  so  their  newspapers  de 
nounced  me,  and  denounced  the  university  where  I 
taught. 

"Then  came  her  daughter — a  young  girl  out  of  col 
lege.  I  was  at  their  home  often,  and  we  became  friends. 
She  saw  how  unhappy  I  was,  and  she  tried  to  open  my 
wife's  eyes,  and  to  win  her  over  to  me.  But,  of  course, 
she  failed  in  that ;  and  then,  little  by  little  we  found  that 
we  loved  each  other.  You  know  me — you  know  that  I 
am  not  a  base  man,  nor  a  careless  man ;  and  you  will 
believe  me  when  I  tell  you  that  there  was  nothing  be 
tween  us  that  the  world  could  have  called  wrong.  We 
knew  that  we  loved,  and  we  knew  that  there  was  no 
hope.  And  that  went  on  for  eight  years ;  for  eight 
years  I  renounced — and  strove  with  every  power  of  my 
heart  and  soul  to  make  something  out  of  that  renuncia 
tion,  to  transmute  it  into  spiritual  power.  And  I 
failed— I  could  not  do  it;  and  in  the  end  I  knew  the 
reason.  It  was  not  beauty  and  nobility — it  was  mad 
ness  and  horror;  it  was  not  life — it  was  death!  The 
time  came  when  I  knew  that  our  renunciation  was  simply 
a  crime  against  the  soul.  Can  you  see  what  I  mean?" 

"Yes,"  said  Thyrsis,  "I  can  see." 

"And   see  what  that  meant  to  me — the  situation  I 


432  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

faced !  I  was  a  clergyman — and  preaching  a  new  cru 
sade  to  the  world.  It  was  like  being  in  a  cage,  with 
bars  of  red-hot  metal.  A  hundred  times  I  would  go 
towards  them — and  a  hundred  times  I  would  shrink 
back.  But  I  had  to  grasp  them  in  the  end." 

"I  see !"  whispered  the  other. 

"The '  thing  was  becoming  a  scandal  anyway ;  the 
world  was  bound  to  make  a  scandal  of  it,  whether  we 
would  or  no.  It  was  a  scandal  that  I  visited  in  another 
woman's  home,  it  was  a  scandal  that  I  spent  her  money 
in  my  propaganda.  The  very  children  on  the  streets 
would  taunt  my  children  about  it.  And  then,  my  health 
broke  down  from  overwork;  and  the  mother  was  going 
abroad,  and  she  invited  me  to  go  with  her  and  her 
daughter ;  and,  of  course,  that  made  it  worse.  So  at 
last  the  old  lady  came  to  me.  'You  love  my  daughter,' 
she  said,  'and  the  world  has  thrown  her  into  your  arms. 
You  must  let  a  divorce  be  arranged,  and  then  marry 
my  daughter.' ' 

"And  you  got  the  divorce  yourself?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"No,"  said  Darrell.  "There  were  grounds  enough; 
but  it  would  have  meant  to  attack  my  wife  in  the  public 
prints,  and  I  would  not  do  it.  I  had  to  let  her  charge 
me  with  desertion,  and  say  nothing." 

"And,  of  course,  they  distorted  that,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"They  distorted  everything!"  cried  the  other.  "My 
present  wife  gave  my  first  wife  all  her  patrimony ;  and 
I  thought  that  was  generous — I  thought  it  was  a  proof 
of  love.  But  the  newspapers  made  it  that  she  had 
bought  me !" 

"And  they  distorted  your  second  marriage?"  asked 
Thyrsis. 

"They  lied  about  it  deliberately,"  was  Darrell's  reply. 
"Some  of  our  friends  gave  little  addresses  of  greeting; 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  46S 

and  so  the  newspapers  called  it  a  new  kind  of  wedding 
— a  'Socialist  wedding',  which  we  had  designed  for  our 
new  kind  of  unions !  And  now,  when  we  buy  a  farm, 
so  that  we  can  live  quietly  in  the  country,  they  turn 
that  into  a  'free  love  colony' !" 

§  13.  THYRSIS  went  away  from  this  interview  with 
some  new  problems  to  ponder  upon.  He  had  seen  a 
little  of  this  power  of  the  newspapers  to  defile  and 
torment  a  man ;  but  he  had  never  dreamed  of  anything 
as  bad  as  this.  This  was  murderous,  this  was  mon 
strous.  He  saw  these  papers  now  as  gigantic  engines 
of  exploitation  and  oppression — irresponsible,  unscrup 
ulous,  wanton — turned  loose  in  society  to  crush  and 
destroy  whom  they  would. 

They  had  taken  this  man  Darre!l  and  they  had  poured 
out  their  poisons  upon  him ;  they  had  tortured  him 
hideously,  they  had  burned  him  up  as  with  vitriol.  As 
a  public  force  he  was  no  longer  a  human  being  at  all — 
he  was  a  deformity,  a  spectre  conjured  up  to  bring 
fright  to  the  beholder.  And  through  it  all  he  was 
utterly  helpless — as  much  at  their  mercy  as  an  infant 
in  the  hands  of  savages.  And  what  had  he  done?  Why 
had  the  torture  been  visited  upon  him? 

Thy r sis  pictured  the  men  who  had  led  in  this  soul- 
hunt.  They  were  supposed  to  be  enlightened  Americans 
at  the  dawn  of  the  twentieth  century ;  and  did  they 
truly  hold  to  the  superstition  of  marriage  as  a  religious 
sacrament,  not  to  be  dissolved  by  mortal  power?  Did 
they  really  believe  that  a  man  who  had  once  been  drawn 
into  matrimony  was  obligated  for  life — no  matter  how 
unhappy  he  might  be,  no  matter  to  what  indignities  he 
might  be  subjected?  Or,  if  they  did  recognize  the 
permissibility  of  divorce — then  why  this  hue  and  cry 


434  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

after  Darrell,  who  had  borne  his  punishment  for  twenty 
years,  and  had  waited  for  eight  or  ten  years  to  test 
the  depths  of  his  new  love? 

The  question  answered  itself;  and  the  answer 
fanned  Thyrsis'  soul  into  a  blaze  of  indignation.  All 
this  patter  about  the  deserted  wife,  pitting  at  home  with 
her  children  and  weeping  her  eyes  out — all  that  was 
so  much  hocus-pocus  for  the  ears  of  the  mob.  The 
chiefs  of  this  Inquisition  and  their  torturers  and  slaves 
wrote  it  with  their  tongues  in  their  cheeks.  What  they 
saw  was  that  they  had  got  securely  strapped  upon  their 
rack  the  man  who  had  threatened  their  power,  who  had 
laid  bare  its  sources  and  exposed  its  iniquity.  And 
they  meant  that  if  ever  he  came  out  of  their  torture- 
chamber,  it  should  be  so  mangled  and  crippled  that 
never  again  would  he  lift  a  finger  against  them ! 

The  gist  of  the  "Darrell  case",  when  you  got  right 
down  to  it,  was  a  quarrel  over  property ;  it  was  the 
snarling  of  wolves  who  had  been  disturbed  at  their 
feeding.  Darrell  had  denounced  wealth  and  the  ex 
ploiters  of  wealth,  and  now  he  had  married  a  woman 
of  wealth ;  and  was  he'to  get  away  with  his  prize?  That 
was  the  meaning  of  all  the  loud  halloo — for  that  the 
hounds  were  unleashed  and  the  hunting-horns  sounded. 

Thyrsis  pictured  the  men  who  "wrote  up"  the  Dar 
rell  story.  He  had  known  them  in  the  newspaper-world 
— the  servants  of  the  giant  publicity-machine;  living 
and  working  in  the  roar  and  rush  of  it,  in  a  stifling  at 
mosphere  where  the  finer  qualities  of  the  soul  were 
poisoned  and  withered  over  night.  They  lived  their 
lives,  almost  without  exception,  by  means  of  alcohol  and 
coffee  and  tobacco;  they  were  scornful,  disillusioned, 
cynical  beyond  all  telling  and  all  belief.  Their  only 
god  in  heaven  or  earth  or  the  waters  under  the  earth 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  435 

was  "copy".  To  such  men  there  were  two  possible 
bonds  of  interest  in  a  woman — the  first  being  lust,  and 
the  second  money.  In  the  case  of  Henry  Darrell  they 
found  both  these  motives ;  and  so  how  clear  the  story 
was  to  them ! 

Thyrsis  thought,  also,  of  the  men  who  owned  and 
managed  the  papers;  those  who  had  turned  loose  the 
hunt  and  directed  it.  Rich  men  were  they,  who  had 
built  these  publicity  machines  for  their  own  purposes. 
And  what  were  they  in  their  private  lives?  Some  of 
them  were  notoriously  dissolute ;  and  still  others  hid 
their  ways  under  a  veil  of  hypocrisy — just  as  in  their 
editorials  they  hid  their  class-interests  under  pretenses 
of  principle.  And  how  easy  it  would  have  been  for 
Darrell  to  get  what  he  wanted  without  losing  his  repu 
tation — if  only  he  had  been  willing  to  follow  the  ex 
ample  of  these  eminent  citizens!  Thyrsis  knew  one 
man,  the  editor  of  an  appallingly  respectable  journal, 
who  had  invited  a  young  girl  to  his  wife's  home  and 
there  attempted  to  seduce  her.  He  knew  the  proprietor 
of  another,  whose  cheerful  custom  it  was  to  go  about 
among  his  newly-married  women-friends  and  suggest 
that,  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  "superman,"  and  their  hus 
bands  were  weaklings,  they  should  let  him  become  in 
secret  the  father  of  their  children.  This  amateur 
eugenist  was  accustomed  to  maintain  that  the  great  men 
in  history  had  for  the  most  part  been  bastards;  and 
Thyrsis,  knowing  this  fact  about  him,  would  read  edi 
torials  in  his  papers,  in  which  Henry  Darrell  was  de 
nounced  as  an  enemy  of  the  home! 

Meantime  Thyrsis  was  reading  Darrell's  books  and 
pamphlets,  and  coming  to  realize  what  a  mind  was  here 
being  destroyed.  For  this  man,  it  seemed  to  him,  was 
master  of  the  noblest  prose  utterance  that  had  been 


436  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

heard  in  America  since  Emerson  died.  He  went  again 
to  hear  him  speak,  in  another  ill-lighted  and  stuffy  hall, 
before  less  than  a  hundred  people ;  .and  the  pain  of  this 
was  more  than  he  could  bear.  He  went  home  that  night 
with  his  friend,  and  labored  with  him  with  all  the  force 
of  his  being.  "You  stay  here,"  he  declared,  "and  put 
yourself  at  the  mercy  of  your  enemies !  You  waste  your 
faculties  contending  with  them — even  knowing  about 
them  is  enough  to  destroy  you.  And  all  the  while 
you  might  escape  from  them  altogether — might  do  your 
real  work,  that  the  world  knows  nothing  of.  No  one 
can  hinder  you.  And  when  you  have  written  the  book  of 
your  soul,  then  your  tormentors  will  be — they  will  be 
like  the  tormentors  of  Dante !  Go  away  !  Go  away  to 
Europe,  where  you  can  be  free !" 

And  so  before  long,  he  stood  upon  a  steamer-pier  and 
waved  Henry  Darrell  and  his  wife  farewell.  And  every 
now  and  then  would  come  letters,  telling  of  long,  long 
agonies;  for  Darrell  had  to  fight  for  those  few  rare 
days  when  ill  health  would  permit  him  to  think.  So  year 
by  year  he  labored  at  what  Thyrsis  knew,  if  it  was  ever 
finished,  would  be  America's  first  world-poem ;  and  in 
the  meantime  eminent  statesmen  and  moralists  who  were 
alarmed  at  the  progress  of  "Socialist  agitation",  would 
continue  to  conjure  up  before  the  public  mind  the  night 
mare  spectre  of  the  once-respected  clergyman,  who  had 
deserted  his  weeping  wife  and  children,  and  run  away 
with  a  rich  woman  to  found  a  "free-love  colony" ! 

§  14.  A  COUPLE  of  days  after  the  Darrells  sailed, 
Thyrsis  set  out  himself  to  find  a  home.  On  account 
of  the  new  book,  he  would  have  to  be  near  a  library, 
and  so  he  had  selected  a  college-town  not  far  from  New 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  437 

York.  He  went  there  now,  and  put  up  for  a  week  at  a 
students'  boarding-house,  while  prosecuting  his  search. 

A  strange  experience  it  was  to  him,  after  the  years 
of  struggle  and  contact  with  the  world,  to  come  back 
to  that  academic  atmosphere ;  to  find  men  who  were 
still  peacefully  counting  up  the  "feminine  endings"  in 
Shakespeare's  verse,  and  writing  elaborate  theses  upon 
the  sources  of  the  Spenserian  legends.  Upon  his  ex 
cursions  into  the  country  some  of  these  young  men 
would  tramp  with  him — threshing  out,  student-fashion, 
the  problems  of  the  universe;  and  how  staggering  it 
was  to  meet  a  man  who  was  about  to  receive  a  master's 
degree  in  literature — and  who  regarded  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough  as  a  "dangerous"  poet,  and  Tennyson's  "Two 
Voices"  as  containing  vital  thought,  and  T.  H.  Green  as 
the  world's  leading  philosopher !  And  this  was  the  "edu 
cation"  that  was  dispensed  at  America's  most  aristo 
cratic  university — for  this  many  millions  of  dollars  had 
been  contributed,  and  scores  of  magnificent  buildings 
erected ! 

Thyrsis  saw  that  a  partial  explanation  lay  in  the 
fact  that  in  connection  with  the  university  there  existed 
a  great  theological  seminary.  Some  of  these  future 
ministers  came  also  to  the  boarding-house,  and  Thyrsis 
listened  to  their  shop-talk — about  the  difference  be 
tween  "transubstantiation"  and  "consubstantiation", 
and  the  status  of  the  controversy  over  the  St.  John 
Gospel.  He  heard  one  man  cite  arguments  from  Paley's 
"Moral  Philosophy" ;  and  another  making  bold  to  state 
that  he  was  uncertain  about  the  verbal  inspiration  of 
the  Pentateuch ! 

To  Thyrsis,  as  he  listened  to  these  discussions,  it 
was  as  if  he  felt  a  black  shadow  stealing  across  his 
soul.  He  wondered  why  he  should  hate  these  men  with 


438  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

a  personal  hatred;  he  tried  to  argue  with  himself  that 
they  must  be  well-meaning  and  earnest.  The  truth  was 
that  they  seemed  to  him  just  like  the  law-students,  men 
moved  by  sordid  and  low  ideals ;  the  only  difference  was 
that  their  minds  were  not  so  keen  as  the  lawyers'. 
Thyrsis  was  coming  little  by  little  to  understand  the 
economic  causes  of  things,  and  he  perceived  that  this 
theological  world  represented  a  stagnant  place  in  the 
stream  of  national  culture ;  it  being  a  subsidized  world, 
maintained  half  by  charity,  vital  men  turned  from  it ; 
it  drew  to  itself  the  feebler  minds,  or  such  as  wished 
to  live  at  ease,  and  not  inquire  too  closely  into  the 
difference  between  truth  and  falsehood. 

§  15.  A  FEW  miles  out  from  the  town  Thyrsis  found 
a  farm  with  an  abundance  of  wild  woodland,  where  the 
farmer  gave  him  permission  to  camp.  And  so  he  went 
back  and  got  some  lumber,  and  loaded  his  tent  and  sup 
plies  on  a  wagon,  and  wrote  Corydon  that  he  would 
meet  her  the  next  afternoon.  With  the  help  of  the 
farmer's  boy  he  labored  the  rest  of  the  day  at  building 
the  platform,  and  putting  up  the  tent,  and  getting 
their  belongings  in  order.  The  next  day  he  was  up  at 
dawn,  constructing  tables  and  stands ;  and  later  on  he 
hired  the  farmer's  "j  agger-wagon",  and  drove  in  for 
Corydon  and  Cedric  and  the  trunks. 

It  was  a  glorious  spring  day,  of  turquoise  sky  and 
glinting  sunshine ;  and  later,  when  the  sun  was  low,  the 
woods  were  flushed  with  a  glow  of  scarlet  and  purple. 
It  lent  a  glory  to  the  scene,  shedding  a  halo  about  the 
commonest  tasks ;  the  unpacking  of  blankets  and  dishes, 
the  ranging  of  groceries  upon  shelves.  They  were  free 
from  all  the  world  at  last — they  were  setting  out  upon 
the  journey  of  their  lives  together! 


THE   TORTURE-HOUSE  439 

So  it  was  with  singing  and  laughter  that  they  went 
at  their  work.  The  baby  crawled  about  on  the  tent- 
floor  and  got  into  everybody's  way,  and  crowed  with 
delight  at  the  novel  surroundings;  and  later  on  his 
mother  gave  him  his  supper  and  put  him  to  bed;  and 
then  she  spread  a  feast  of  bread  and  butter,  and  fresh 
milk  and  eggs  and  a  can  of  fruit,  and  they  sat  down  to 
the  first  meal  they  had  eaten  together  in  many  a  long, 
long  month. 

They  were  tired  and  ravenously  hungry ;  but  their 
happiness  of  soul  was  keener  even  than  any  physical 
sensation,  and  they  sat  leaning  upon  their  elbows  and 
gazing  across  the  table,  reading  the  wonder  in  each 
other's  eyes. 

"It  has  been  a  year  since  we  parted !"  whispered  Cory- 
don. 

"Just  a  year !"  he  said.     "It  seems  like  ten  of  them." 

"And  do  you  remember,  Thyrsis,  how  we  prayed! 
How  we  prayed  for  this  very  hour !" 

He  took  her  hands  in  his.  Once  more  they  renewed 
their  pledges  of  devotion ;  once  more  the  vision  of  their 
hopes  unrolled  before  them.  "From  now  on,"  he  whis 
pered,  "our  life  is  our  own !  We  can  make  it  whatever 
we  will.  Let  us  make  it  something  beautiful." 

And  so  there  they  made  a  compact.  They  would 
speak  no  more  of  the  year  that  was  past ;  it  was  a  bad 
dream,  and  now  it  was  gone.  Let  it  be  swept  from  their 
thoughts,  and  let  them  go  on  to  make  the  future  what 
they  desired  it  to  be. 


BOOK  XII 
THE  TREADMILL 


They  sat  m  the  little  cabin,  where  she  had  been  read- 
ing  some  lines  from  the  poem  again — 

"0  easy  access  to  the  hearer's  grace 

When  Dorian  shepherds  sang  to  Proserpine!" 

"Ah,  yes!"  he  said.  "But  our  lot  was  cast  in  a  dif 
ferent  time." 

She  put  her  hand  upon  his.  "Even  so,"  she  said; 
and  then  turned  the  page,  and  read  once  more — 

"What  though  the  music  of  thy  rustic  -flute 
Kept  not  -for  long  its  happy,  country  tone; 
Lost  it  too  soon,  and  learnt  a  stormy  note 
Of  men  contention-tost,  of  men  who  groan, 

Which  task'd  thy  pipe  too  sore,  and  tired  thy 

throat — 

It  failed,  and  thou  wast  mute! 
Yet  hadst  thou  always  visions  of  our  light!" 


§  1.  The  mise-en-scene  of  their  new  adventure  in 
domesticity  was  a  tent  eighteen  feet  by  twelve ;  but  as 
the  side-walls  were  low,  they  could  walk  only  in  the 
centre,  and  must  range  their  belongings  at  the  sides. 
To  the  left,  as  one  entered  the  tent,  there  stood  a  soap 
box  with  a  tiny  oil-stove  upon  it ;  and  then  a  stand, 
made  out  of  a  packing-box,  to  hold  their  dishes,  their 
cooking-utensils  and  their  limited  supply  of  provisions. 
Next  down  the  line  came  a  trunk,  and  in  the  corner  the 
baby's  crib — which  had  been  outgrown  by  the  farmer's 
children,  and  purchased  by  Thyrsis  for  a  dollar.  At 
the  rear  was  a  folding-table,  and  above  it  a  board  from 
which  Corydon  hung  her  clothing ;  along  the  other  wall 
were  her  canvas  cot,  and  a  little  stand  with  some  books, 
and  a  wash-stand  and  another  trunk. 

Some  distance  off  in  the  woods  stood  a  second  tent, 
seven  feet  square,  in  which  Thyrsis  had  a  cot  for  him 
self,  and  also  a  canvas-chair  in  which  he  .sat  to  receive 
the  visits  of  his  muse.  They  got  their  drinking  water 
from  a  spring  near  by ;  there  was  a  tiny  stream  beside 
the  tent  which  provided  their  washing-water.  In  this 
stream  Thyrsis  hollowed  out  a  flat  basin,  in  which  they 
might  set  their  butter-crock,  and  a  pail  of  milk,  and  a 
larger  pail  that  held  their  meat.  Below  that  was  a 
deeper  pool  from  which  they  dipped  water,  and  lower 
yet  a  third  pool,  with  a  board  on  which  Corydon  might 
sit  and  wash  diapers,  to  her  heart's  content  and  her 
back's  exhaustion. 

The  tent  had  been  old  when  Thyrsis  got  it,  and  as 
443 


444  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

this  was  the  third  season  he  had  used  it,  it  was  dark  and 
dun  of  hue.  They  had  not  noticed  this  at  the  outset, 
as  they  had  put  it  up  on  a  bright,  sunshiny  day,  and 
also  before  the  trees  had  put  out  all  their  foliage.  But 
now,  when  rain  came,  they  found  that  they  had  to  light 
a  lamp  in  order  to  read  in  the  tent ;  and,  of  course,  it 
was  on  rainy  days  that  they  had  to  be  inside.  Thyrsis 
did  not  realize  the  influence  which  this  tent  had  upon 
his  wife's  spirits ;  it  was  only  after  he  saw  Tier  made 
physically  ill  by  having  to  live  in  a  room  with  yellow 
wall-paper,  that  he  came  to  understand  the  power  which 
her  surroundings  had  over  Corydon. 

If  they  'so  much  as  touched  a  finger  to  the  roof  of 
the  tent  while  it  was  raining,  a  steady  dripping  would 
come  through  at  that  point.  Then,  as  the  rains  grew 
heavier,  water  took  to  running  down  the  pole  that  stood 
in  the  centre  of  the  tent,  and  formed  a  pool  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor,  so  that  Thyrsis  had  to  get  the  axe  and  cut 
a  hole  there.  And,  of  course,  there  was  no  way  to  dry 
anything;  the  woods,  which  were  low,  were  turned  into 
a  swamp,  and  one's  shoes  became  caked  with  mud,  and 
there  was  no  keeping  the  tent-floor  clean. 

In  this  place  they  had  to  keep  an  uble-bodied,  year- 
and-a-half-old  baby!  There  was  no  -other  place  to 
keep  him.  He  could  not  be  allowed  on  the  damp  floor, 
nor  where  he  could  touch  the  top  of  the  tent ;  so  Thyrsis 
set  up  sticks  at  all  four  corners  of  his  crib,  and  tied 
strong  twine  about  them,  making  a  little  pen ;  and 
therein  they  put  the  baby,  and  therein  he  had  to  stay. 
He  had  his  rattle  and  his  rubber-doll  and  his  blocks  and 
the  rest  of  his  gim-cracks ;  and  after  he  had  howled 
long  enough  to  satisfy  himself  that  there  was  no  de 
liverance  from  his  prison,  he  settled  back  and  accepted 
his  tragic  fate.  There  came  occasions  when  Corydon 


THE    TREADMILL  445 

was  sick,  and  unable  to  move;  then  Thyrsis  would  put 
up  his  umbrella  and  take  Cedric  to  his  own  tent,  where 
he  would  draw  a  chalk-line  across  the  floor.  One-half 
of  the  forty-nine  square  feet  of  space  was  his,  and  in 
it  he  would  sit  and  read  and  study ;  in  the  other  half 
the  baby  would  play.  After  long  experience  he  came 
to  realize  that  at  such  times  Papa  would  not  pay  any 
attention  to  him,  and  that  crossing  the  chalk-line  in 
volved  getting  one's  "mungies"  spanked. 

There  were  other  troubles  that  fell  upon  them.  At 
first,  it  being  April,  it  was  cold  at  night ;  and  they  had 
no  stove,  and  no  room  for  a  stove.  Later  on  the 
ceaseless  rains  brought  a  plague  of  mosquitoes ;  and  so 
Thyrsis  had  to  rig  up  a  triangular  door  and  cover 
the  entrance  to  the  tent  with  netting;  and  when  the 
weather  grew  better,  he  had  to  get  more  netting  and 
construct  a  little  house,  in  which  the  baby  could  play 
outdoors..  And  then  there  had  to  be  more  spankings 
of  "mungies",  to  teach  the  infant  that  this  mysterious 
mosquito-bar  must  not  be  walked  through,  nor  pulled 
at,  nor  poked  with  sticks,  nor  even  eaten. 

They  prayed  for  fair  days,  and  a  little  sunshine ;  and 
it  seemed  as  if  the  weather-demons  had  discovered  this, 
and  were  playing  with  them.  There  would  come  a 
bright  morning,  and  they  would  spread  a  rug  in  the 
baby's  cage,  and  hang  out  all  their  damp  belongings 
to  dry ;  and  then  would  come  a  sudden  shower, 
and  baby  and  rug  and  belongings  would  all 
have  to  pile  back  into  the  tent.  And  then  it 
would  clear  again,  and  everything  would  go  out  once 
more;  and  they  would  prepare  dinner,  and  be  com 
fortably  settled  to  eat,  when  it  would  begin  to  sprinkle 
again.  They  would  move  in  the  clothing  and  the  baby, 
and  when  it  began  to  rain  harder,  they  would  move  in 


446  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  table  and  the  food;  and  forthwith  the  rain  would 
cease.  Because  it  was  poor  fun  eating  in  a  dark  tent 
by  lamp-light,  amid  the  odor  of  gas-stove  and  cooking, 
they  might  move  out  once  more — but  only  to  repeat  the 
same  experience  over  again. 

For  six  weeks  after  their  arrival  there  was  not  a  day 
without  rain,  and  it  would  rain  sometimes  for  half  a 
week  without  ceasing.  So  everything  they  owned  be 
came  damp  and  mouldy — all  their  clothing,  their  food, 
the  very  beds  upon  which  they  slept.  One  of  their 
miseries  was  the  lack  of  place  to  keep  things ;  all  their 
odds  and  ends  had  to  be  stowed  away  under  the  cots 
— where  one  might  find  clothing,  and  books,  and  manu 
scripts,  and  a  hammock,  and  an  umbrella,  and  some 
shoes,  and  a  box  of  prunes,  and  a  sack  of  potatoes, 
and  half  a  ham.  When  water  got  in  at  the  sides  of  the 
tent  and  wet  all  these  objects,  and  the  bedclothing  hung 
over  the  floor  and  got  into  them,  it  was  trying  to  the 
temper  to  have  to  rummage  there. 

•§  2.  BEFORE  she  left  the  city  Corydon  had  taken  the 
baby  to  consult  a  famous  "child-specialist" — at  five  dol 
lars  per  consultation ;  she  had  received  the  dreadful  tid 
ings  that  Cedric  was  threatened  with  the  "rickets". 
So  she  had  come  out  to  the  country  with  one  mighty 
purpose  in  her  soul.  "Under-nourishment",  the  doctor 
had  said ;  and  he  had  laid  out  a  regular  schedule.  Six 
times  daily  the  unhappy  infant  was  to  be  fed ;  and  each 
time  some  elaborate  concoction  had  to  be  got  ready — 
practically  nothing  could  be  eaten  in  a  state  of  nature. 
The  first  meal  would  consist  of,  say  a  poached  egg  on 
a  piece  of  toast,  and  the  juice  of  an  orange,  with  the 
seeds  carefully  excluded ;  the  next  of  some  chicken 
broth  with  a  cracker  or  two,  and  the  pulp  of  prunes 


THE    TREADMILL  447 

with  the  skins  removed;  the  next  of  some  beef  chopped 
up  and  pounded  to  a  pulp  and  broiled,  together  with 
a  bit  of  mashed  potato  or  some  other  cooked  vegetable ; 
the  next  of  some  gruel,  with  cream  and  sugar,  and 
some  more  prunes. 

And  these  operations,  of  course,  took  the  greater 
part  of  Corydon's  day;  she  would  struggle  at  them 
until  she  was  ready  to  drop,  and  when  she  had  to  give 
up  they  would  fall  to  Thyrsis.  Some  of  them  fell  to 
him  quite  frequently — for  instance,  the  pounding  of 
the  meat.  It  had  to  have  all  the  fat  and  gristle  care 
fully  cut  out;  and  there  had  to  be  a  clean  board,  and 
a  clean  hammer,  both  of  which  must  be  scraped  and 
washed  afterwards ;  and  whenever  by  any  chance  Cory- 
don  let  the  meat  stay  on  the  fire  a  second  too  long, 
so  that  it  got  hard,  the  whole  elaborate  operation  had 
to  be  gone  over  again — was  not  the  baby's  life  at  stake? 

It  was  quite  vain  for  him  to  protest  as  to  the  pains 
that  Corydon  took  to  remove  every  tiniest  fragment  of 
the  skin  of  a  stewed  prune.  "Surely,  dearest,"  he 
would  argue,  "the  internal  arrangements  of  a  baby  are 
not  so  delicate  as  to  be  torn  by  a  tiny  bit  of  prune- 
skin  !" 

But  to  Corydon  the  internal  arrangements  of  babies 
were  mysterious  things — to  be  understood  only  by  a 
child-specialist  at  five  dollars  per  visit.  "He  told  me 
what  to  do,"  she  would  say ;  "and  I  am  going  to  do  it." 

So  she  would  prepare  the  concoctions,  and  would  sit 
and  feed  them  to  the  baby,  spoonful  by  spoonful ;  and 
long  after  the  little  one  had  been  stuffed  to  the  burst 
ing-point,  she  would  hold  the  spoon  poised  in  front  of 
its  mouth,  making  tentative  passes,  and  seeking  by  some 
device  to  cajole  the  mouth  into  opening  and  admitting 
one  last  morsel  of  the  precious  nutriment.  The  child 


448  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

had  a  word  of  its  own  inventing,  wherewith  it  denoted 
things  that  were  good  to  eat.  "Hee,  gubum,  gubum!" 
he  would  exclaim ;  and  Cor jdon  would  hold  the  spoon 
and  repeat  "Gubum,  gubum," — long  after  the  baby  had 
Vgun  to  sputter  and  gasp  and  make  plain  that  it  was 
no  longer  "gubum". 

Also,  under  the  instructions  of  the  specialist,  they 
made  an  attempt  to  break  the  child  of  the  "hoodaloo 
mungie"  habit.  A  baby  should  lie  down  and  go  to 
sleep  without  handling,  the  authority  had  declared; 
and  now  that  there  was  all  outdoors  for  him  to  cry  in, 
they  resolved  that  he  should  be  taught.  So  they  built 
up  the  fence  about  the  crib,  and  laid  the  baby  in  for  his 
afternoon  nap,  and  started  to  go  away.  And  the  baby 
gave  one  look  of  perplexity  and  dismay,  and  then  be 
gan  to  cry.  By  the  time  they  had  got  out  of  the  tent 
he  was  screaming  like  a  creature  possessed;  and  Cory- 
don  and  Thyrsis  sat  outside  and  stared  at  each  other 
in  wonder  and  alarm.  When  she  could  stand  it  no  more, 
they  went  away  to  a  distance ;  but  still  the  uproar  went 
on.  Now  and  then  they  would  creep  back  and  peep  in 
at  the  purple  and  choking  infant ;  and  then  steal  away 
again,  and  discuss  the  phenomenon,  and  wish  that  the 
"child-specialist"  were  there  to  advise  them.  Finally, 
when  the  crying  had  gone  on  for  two  hours  without  a 
moment's  pause,  they  gave  up,  because  they  were  afraid 
the  baby  might  cry  itself  into  convulsions.  And  so 
the  "hoodaloo  mungie"  habit  went  on  for  some  time 

yet. 

Under  the  "stuffing  regime"  the  infant  at  first  thrived 
amazingly;  he  became  fat  and  rosy,  and  Corydon's 
heart  beat  high  with  joy  and  pride.  But  then  came 
midsummer,  and  the  hot  season ;  and  first  of  all  a  rash 
broke  out  upon  the  precious  body,  and  in  spite  of 


THE    TREADMILL  449 

powders  and  ointments,  refused  to  go  away.  Later  on 
came  the  "hives",  with  which  the  baby  was  spotted  like 
the  top  of  a  pepper-crust.  And  then,  as  fate  willed  it, 
the  family  of  a  woman  who  did  some  laundry  for  Cory- 
don  developed  the  measles;  and  Corydon  found  it  out 
too  late — and  so  they  were  in  for  the  first  of  a  long 
program  of  "children's  diseases". 

It  was  a  siege  that  lasted  for  a  month  and  more — a 
nightmare  experience.  The  child  had  to  be  kept  in  a 
dark  place,  under  pain  of  losing  its  eyesight ;  and  when 
it  was  very  hot  in  the  tent,  some  one  had  to  sit  and  fan 
it.  It  could  not  sleep,  but  writhed  and  moaned,  now 
screaming  in  torment,  now  whimpering  like  a  frightened 
cur — a  sound  that  wrung  Thyrsis'  very  heart.  And 
oh,  the  sight  of  the  little  body — purple,  a  mass  of  erup 
tions,  and  with  beads  of  perspiration  upon  it !  Cory- 
don's  mother  came  to  help  her  through  this  ordeal,  and 
would  sit  for  hours  upon  hours,  rocking  the  wailing 
infant  in  her  arms. 

§  3.  BUT  there  were  ups  as  well  as  downs  in  this 
tenting  adventure.  There  came  glorious  days,  when 
they  took  long  tramps  over  the  hills ;  or  when  Thyrsis 
would  carry  the  child  upon  his  shoulder,  and  they  would 
wander  about  the  meadows,  picking  daisies  and  clover, 
and  making  garlands  for  Corydon.  Once  Cedric  sat 
down  upon  a  bumble-bee,  and  that  was  hard  upon  him, 
and  perhaps  upon  the  bee.  But  for  the  most  part  the 
little  one  was  enraptured  during  these  excursions.  He 
was  fascinated  with  the  flowers,  and  continually  seeking 
for  an  opportunity  to  devour  some  of  them;  while  he 
was  doing  it  he  would  wear  such  a  roguish  smile — it  was 
impossible  not  to  believe  that  he  understood  the  agi 
tation  which  these  abnormal  appetites  occasioned  in  his 


450  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

parents.  Corydon  would  be  seized  with  a  sudden  access 
of  affection,  and  she  would  clutch  him  in  her  arms  and 
squeeze  him,  and  fairly  smother  him  with  kisses.  Of 
course  the  youngster  would  protest  wildly  at  this,  and 
so  not  infrequently  the  demonstration  would  end  tragi 
cally. 

"I  can't  have  any  joy  in  my  baby  at  all!"  she  would 
lament ;  and  Thyrsis  would  have  to  soothe  the  child,  and 
plead  with  her  to  find  more  practical  ways  of  demon 
strating  her  maternal  devotion. 

Cedric  was  beginning  to  make  determined  efforts  to 
talk  now,  and  he  had  the  most  original  names  for  things. 
His  parents  would  adopt  these  into  their  own  speech, 
which  thus  departed  rapidly  from  established  usage. 
They  had  to  bring  themselves  to  realize  that  if  they 
went  on  in  that  fashion,  the  child  would  never  learn  to 
speak  so  that  any  one  else  could  understand  him.  The 
grandmothers  were  most  strenuous  upon  this  point,  and 
would  laboriously  explain  to  the  infant  that  chickens 
and  pigeons  and  sparrows  were  not  all  known  as  "ducky- 
ducks"  ;  they  would  plead  with  it  to  say  "bottle  of  milk", 
while  its  reckless  parents  were  delighting  themselves 
with  such  perversions  as  "bobbu  mookie-mook." 

Two  or  three  times  each  week  the  farmer  would  bring 
their  mail;  and  once  a  week  they  would  hire  an  old 
scare-crow  of  a  horse,  and  a  buggy  which  might  have 
passed  for  the  one-horse  shay  in  its  ninety-ninth  year, 
and  drive  to  a  town  for  provisions.  It  was  amazing 
what  loads  of  provisions  a  family  of  three  could  con 
sume  in  the  course  of  a  week — especially  when  one  of 
them  was  following  the  "stuffing  regime".  There  had 
to  be  a  lot  of  figuring  done  to  get  it  for  the  sum  of 
thirty  dollars  a  month ;  'and  this  put  another  grievous 
burden  upon  Thyrsis.  Corydon,  alas,  had  no  talents 


THE    TREADMILL  451 

for  figuring,  and  was  cursed  with  a  weakness  for  such 
superfluities  as  clean  laundry  and  coffee  with  cream. 
This  was  one  more  aspect  of  the  difference  between  the 
Hebrew  and  the  Greek  temperament ;  and  sometimes  the 
Hebrew  temperament  would  lose  its  temper,  and  the 
Greek  temperament  would  take  to  tears.  The  situation 
was  all  the  more  complicated  because  of  their  pitiful 
ignorance.  They  really  did  not  know  what  was  neces' 
sity  and  what  was  luxury.  For  instance,  Thyrsis  had 
read  somewhere  that  people  could  live  without  meat ;  buf" 
Corydon  had  never  heard  of  such  an  idea,  and  insisted 
with  vehemence  that  it  was  an  absurdity. 

However,  there  was  no  evading  the  issue  of  poverty ; 
for  the  thirty  dollars  was  all  they  had.  "The  Hearer 
of  Truth"  had  been  out  several  months  now,  and  had 
not  sold  a  thousand  copies ;  and  so  it  was  to  be  doubted 
if  Thyrsis  would  ever  get  another  dollar  from  that. 
Also,  he  had  heard  from  the  translator  of  "The  Genius", 
and  had  agreed  to  accept  twenty-five  dollars  as  an 
"honorarium"  for  the  production  of  his  play  in  Ger* 
many — this  princely  sum  to  be  paid  when  the  play 
came  out  during  the  following  winter. 

Meantime,  of  course,  he  was  driving  away  at  his  new 
work.  Domestic  duties  took  up  most  of  his  morning; 
but  he  would  get  away  into  the  woods  in  the  after 
noons,  and  in  the  evenings,  when  the  family  was  asleep, 
he  would  work  until  far  after  midnight.  He  was  bring 
ing  out  basketfuls  of  books  from  the  library  of  the 
university;  and  he  lived  another  life  in  these — sharing, 
in  a  hundred  different  forms,  the  agony  of  the  War. 
He  was  not  writing  yet;  he  was  filling  up  his  soul 
with  the  thing,  making  it  a  reservoir  of  impressions. 
Some  times  it  would  seem  that  the  reservoir  was  nearly 
full,  and  he  would  be  seized  with  a  hunger  to  be  at 


452  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

work ;  he  would  go  about  possessed  by  it — absent- 
minded,  restless,  nervous  when  he  was  spoken  to.  It  was 
hard  for  a  man  who  listened  all  night  to  the  death- 
groans  of  the  thousands  piled  up  before  "Bloody 
Angle",  to  get  up  in  the  morning  and  be  satisfactory 
in  the  role  of  "mother's  assistant". 

Here  again  was  the  torment  of  this  matrimonial  bond 
to  a  man  who  wished  to  be  an  artist.  He  had  to  live  two 
lives,  when  one  was  more  than  he  could  attend  to ;  he 
had  to  be  always  aware  of  another  soul  yearning  for 
him,  reaching  out  to  him  and  craving  his  attention. 
To  be  sure,  Corydon  was  interested  in  what  he  was 
doing;  she  even  made  heroic  efforts  to  read  the  books 
that  he  was  reading.  But  she  had  so  many  duties,  and 
so  many  headaches ;  and  when  night  came  she  was  so 
tired !  She  would  ask  him  to  tell  her  about  his  vision ; 
and  was  not  the  thing  untellable?  Why  else  did  he 
have  to  labor  day  and  night,  like  a  man  possessed?  He 
would  explain  this  to  her,  and  she  would  bid  him  go 
on  and  do  his  work  and  not  mind  her.  But  when  he 
would  take  her  at  her  word,  and  there  would  follow  a 
week  or  two  of  indifference  and  preoccupation — then 
he  would  discover  that  she  was  again  unhappy. 

§  4.  THIS  never  ceased  to  be  the  case  between  them ; 
but  perhaps  it  was  intensified  at  this  time  by  the  fact 
that  their  sex-life  had  to  be  suppressed.  This  was 
a  problem  which  they  had  talked  out  between  them  be 
fore  they  came  away.  Thyrsis,  who  was  groping  for 
the  truth  about  these  matters,  had  come  to  the  con 
clusion  that  the  factor  which  gave  dignity  and  mean 
ing  to  intercourse  between  a  man  and  woman  was  the 
desire,  or  at  any  rate  the  willingness,  to  create  a  child. 
Corydon  was  not  sure  that  she  agreed  with  him  in  this ; 


THE    TREADMILL  453 

but  so  far  as  their  own  case  was  concerned,  it  was  quite 
clear  that  they  could  take  no  remotest  chance  of  any 
accident — another  child  would  mean  certain  destruction 
for  all  three  of  them.  And  so  they  had  gone  back  to 
the  "brother  and  sister"  arrangement  with  which  they 
had  begun  life.  This  was  a  simple  matter  for  Thyrsis, 
who  was  utterly  wrapped  up  in  his  book;  it  was  not 
so  simple  for  Corydon,  though  neither  of  them  realized 
it,  nor  could  have  been  brought  to  admit  it.  As  usual, 
Corydon  desired  to  be  what  he  was,  and  to  feel  what 
he  felt ;  and  so  Thyrsis  did  not  realize  how  another  side 
of  her  was  being  blighted.  Hers  was  predominantly  a 
love-nature;  it  was  intolerable  to  her  that  any  one  she 
loved  should  not  love  her  in  return,  and  love  her  in  the 
same  way,  and  to  the  same  extent ;  and  now,  when  her 
entire  being  went  out  to  him,  she  found  herself  obliged 
to  suppress  her  emotions. 

Sometimes  the  thing  would  break  out  in  spite  of  her. 

"Thyrsis,"  she  would  cry,  "aren't  you  going  to  kiss 
me  good-night?" 

"Didn't  I  kiss  you,  dearest?"  he  would  answer. 

"Oh,  but  such  a  cold  and  perfunctory  kiss !" 

And  so  he  would  come  and  put  his  arms  about  her ; 
but  even  while  she  held  him  thus,  she  would  feel  the 
life  go  out  of  his  caresses,  and  see  his  eyes  with  a  far- 
off  expression.  She  would  know  that  his  thoughts  were 
away  upon  some  battle-field. 

"Tell  me,  Thyrsis,"  she  would  exclaim.  "Do  you 
really  love  me?" 

"Yes,  dear,"  he  would  reply.     "I  love  you." 

"But  how  much  do  you  love  me?" 

And  then  he  would  be  dumb.  What  a  question  to 
ask  him !  As  if  he  had  the  time  and  the  energy  to  climb 
to  those  heights,  to  speak  again  that  difficult  language ! 


454  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Had  he  not  told  her  a  thousand  times  how  much  he 
loved  her!  and  could  she  not  believe  it  and  understand 
it? 

"But  why  should  it  be  so  hard  to  tell  me?"  she  would 
protest. 

And  he  would  answer  that  to  him  it  was  a  denial  of 
love  to  explain  or  to  make  promises.  He  was  as  un 
changeable  as  the  laws  of  nature — he  could  no  more 
be  faithless  to  her  soul  than  he  could  to  his  own. 

"I  want  you  to  take  that  for  granted,"  he  would  say ; 
"to  know  it  as  you  know  that  the  sun  will  rise  to-mor 
row  morning." 

"But,  Thyrsis,"  she  would  answer,  when  he  used  this 
metaphor,  "don't  people  sometimes  like  to  go  out  and 
see  the  sun  rise?" 

§  5.  THE  summer  passed ;  and  Thyrsis  found  to  his 
dismay  that  his  relentless  muse  had  not  yet  permitted 
him  to  write  a  word.  He  had  not  a  sufficient  grasp 
upon  his  mighty  subject — nor  for  that  matter  had  he 
freedom  to  get  by  himself  and  wrestle  it  out.  He 
shrunk  from  that  death-grapple,  while  they  were  in  this 
unsettled  state.  They  could  not  stay  in  tents  through 
the  winter-time;  and  where  were  they  to  go? 

Thyrsis  was  consumed  with  the  desire  to  build  a  tiny 
house  in  these  woods.  He  had  roamed  the  country 
over,  without  finding  any  place  that  was  habitable ;  and 
besides,  he  did  not  want  to  pay  rent — he  wanted  a 
home  of  his  own,  however  humble.  He  had  meant  to 
build  one  with  the  money  from  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" ; 
but  now  there  came  a  statement  from  the  publisher, 
showing  that  there  would  be  due  him  on  the  book  a 
trifle  over  eleven  dollars! 

He  tried  a  new  plan.     He  wrote  out  a  "scenario"  of 


THE    TREADMILL  455 

his  projected  novel,  and  sent  this  to  his  publisher,  to 
see  if  he  could  get  a  contract  in  advance.  He  asked 
for  five  hundred  dollars — with  that  he  could  build  the 
house  he  wanted,  and  live  for  another  six  months,  until 
the  book  was  done.  The  publisher  wrote  him  to  come  to 
the  city,  where,  after  some  parleying,  he  submitted  a 
proposition ;  he  would  advance  the  money  and  publish 
the  book,  paying  ten  per  cent,  royalty ;  but  he  must 
also  have  the  option  to  publish  the  author's  future 
writings  for  ten  years  upon  the  same  basis. 

This  rather  staggered  Thyrsis.  He  was  business 
man  enough  by  this  time  to  realize  that  if  he  ever  had 
a  real  success  he  could  get  fifteen  or  twenty  per  cent, 
upon  his  future  work — there  were  even  some  authors 
who  got  twenty-five  per  cent.  And  moreover,  he  did 
not  like  to  tie  himself  to  this  publisher,  who  was  of  the 
hard  and  grasping  type.  He  went  home  to  think  it 
over,  and  in  the  end  he  wrote  to  Henry  Darrell.  He  set 
forth  the  situation,  and  showed  how  much  money  it 
might  mean  to  him — money  which  he  would  otherwise 
be  able  to  devote  to  some  useful  purpose.  It  all  de 
pended  upon  what  Darrell  could  do  in  the  emergency. 

He  waited  three  weeks,  and  then  came  Darrell's  reply, 
saying  that  he  could  not  possibly  do  what  Thyrsis 
wished.  There  were  so  many  calls  upon  him — the  So 
cialist  paper,  was  in  trouble,  and  so  on.  Thereupon 
Thyrsis  wrote  to  the  publisher  to  say  that  he  accepted 
the  offer  and  would  sign  the  contract;  but  in  a  couple 
of  days  he  received  a  curt  reply,  to  the  effect  that  the 
publisher  had  changed  his  mind,  and  no  longer  cared  to 
consider  the  arrangement.  He  had,  as  Thyrsis  found 
afterwards,  got  rid  of  the  enthusiastic  young  man  who 
had  inveigled  him  into  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" ;  and 


456  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

perhaps  also  he  had  been  reading  the  ridicule  which  the 
critics  were  pouring  out  upon  that  unhappy  book. 

So  once  more  Thyrsis  wrote  to  Darrell — a  letter  of 
agonized  entreaty.  He  was  at  the  most  critical  moment 
of  his  life;  and  now,  at  the  very  culmination  of  his  ef 
fort,  to  have  to  give  up  would  be  a  calamity  he  could 
simply  not  contemplate.  If  only  he  could  finish  the 
task,  he  would  be  saved ;  for  this  was  a  book  that  would 
grip  men  and  shake  them — that  it  should  fail  was  simply 
unthinkable.  He  could  make  out  with  two  hundred  dol 
lars  ;  and  he  besought  his  friend  at  any  sacrifice  to  stand 
by  him.  He  asked  him  to  cable ;  and  when,  a  couple  of 
weeks  later,  the  message  came — "all  right" — to  Thyrsis 
it  was  like  waking  up  and  escaping  from  the  grip  of 
some  terrible  dream. 

§  6.  AND  so  began  the  house-building.  It  was  high 
time,  too — the  latter  part  of  September,  and  the  nights 
were  growing  chill.  He  sought  out  a  carpenter  to  help 
liim,  and  had  an  interview  with  his  friend  the  farmer, 
who  agreed  to  rent  a  bit  of  land,  in  a  corner  of  his 
orchard,  by  the  edge  of  the  wood.  It  was  under  the 
shade  of  a  great  elm-tree,  and  sufficiently  remote  from 
all  the  world  to  satisfy  the  taste  of  any  literary  hermit. 

For  months  before  this  he  and  Corydon  had  dis 
cussed  the  plans  of  their  future  home;  every  square 
inch  of  it  had  been  a  subject  of  debate.  In  its  archi 
tectural  style  it  was  a  compromise  between  Corydon's 
aesthetic  yearnings,  and  the  rigid  standards  of  economy 
which  circumstance  imposed.  It  was  to  be  eighteen 
feet  long  and  sixteen  feet  wide — six  feet  high  at  the 
sides  and  nine  in  the  centre.  It  was  to  be  "weather- 
boarded",  and  roofed  with  paper,  instead  of  shingles — 
this  being  so  much  cheaper.  Corydon  heard  with  dis- 


THE    TREADMILL  45? 

may  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  paint  this  roofing- 
paper  black;  and  Thyrsis,  by  way  of  compensation, 
agreed  that  the  weather-boards  should  have  some 
"natural  finish",  instead  of  common  paint.  There  was 
to  be  a  six-foot  piazza  in  front,  and  a  little  platform  in 
back,  with  steps  descending  to  the  spring. 

There  had  been  long  discussions  about  the  method 
of  heating  the  mansion.  Corydon  had  been  observing 
the  customs  of  her  neighbors  in  this  typical  "small- 
farming"  district,  and  declared  that  they  had  two  lead 
ing  characteristics :  first,  they  were  not  happy  until 
they  had  had  all  their  own  teeth  extracted,  and  a  com 
plete  set  of  "store-teeth"  substituted;  and  second,  as 
soon  as  they  moved  into  a  house,  they  boarded  over  the 
open  fire-place  and  covered  the  boards  with  wall-paper. 
But  Thyrsis,  making  investigations  along  practical 
lines,  found  that  the  open  fire-place  had  a  bad  reputa 
tion  as  a  consumer  of  fuel;  and  also,  it  would  take  a 
mason  to  build  a  chimney,  and  the  wages  of  masons  were 
high.  So  Corydon  had  to  reconcile  herself  to  a  house 
with  a  stove,  and  a  stove-pipe  that  went  through  a  hole 
in  the  wall! 

Nevertheless  this  house-building  time  was  one  of  the 
happiest  periods  of  their  lives.  For  here  was  something 
constructive,  in  which  they  could  both  be  occupied. 
Thyrsis  would  be  up  and  at  work  early  in  the  morn 
ing,  before  the  carpenter  came;  and  in  between  the 
baby's  various  meals,  Corydon  would  come  also,  and 
take  part  in  the  operations.  A  miraculous  thing  it 
was  to  see  the  house  of  their  dreams  coming  into  be 
ing,  with  every  feature  just  as  they  had  planned  it. 
And  what  a  palatial  structure  it  was — with  so  much 
space  and  air !  One  could  actually  move  about  in  it 
without  danger  of  striking  one's  head ;  coming  into  it 


458  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

from  the  tent,  one  felt  as  if  he  were  entering  a 
cathedral ! 

They  were  so  consumed  with  a  desire  to  see  it  finished, 
that  Thyrsis  would  stay  at  the  work  until  darkness 
came  upon  him,  and  sometimes  even  worked  by  moon 
light,  or  with  a  lantern.  And  how  proud  they  would 
be  when  the  carpenter  came  next  morning,  and  found 
the  last  roof-boards  laid,  or  the  flooring  all  completed ! 
Thyrsis  learned  the  mysteries  of  window-sills  and  door 
frames,  the  excitements  of  "weather-boarding,"  and  the 
perils  of  roof-painting.  He  realized  with  wonder  how 
many  achievements  of  civilization  the  privileged  classes 
take  as  a  matter  of  course.  What  a  remarkable  thing 
it  was,  when  one  came  to  think  of  it,  that  a  door  should 
swing  true  upon  its  hinges,  and  fit  exactly  into  its 
frame,  and  latch  with  a  precise  and  soul-satisfying 
snap!  And  that  windows  should  slide  up  and  down 
in  their  frames,  and  stop  at  certain  places  with  a  spring- 
catch  ! 

Corydon  too  was  interested  in  these  discoveries,  and 
became  skilled  at  holding  weather-boards  while  her  hus 
band  nailed  them,  and  at  helping  to  unroll  and  measure 
roofing-paper,  and  climbing  up  the  ladder  and  holding 
it  in  place.  Even  the  baby  became  fired  with  the  spirit 
of  achievement,  and  would  get  himself  a  hammer  and  a 
board,  and  plague  his  parents  until  they  started  a 
dozen  or  so  of  nails  for  him — after  which  he  would  sit 
and  blissfully  pound  them  into  the  board,  and  all  but 
pound  them  through  the  board  in  his  enthusiasm.  Be 
fore  long  he  even  learned  to  start  them  himself;  and 
a  most  diverting  sight  it  was  to  see  this  twenty-two- 
months  old  youngster  driving  nails  like  an  infant  Her 
cules.  For  the  fastening  of  the  roofing-paper  they  used 
little  circular  plates  of  tin  called  "cotterels" ;  and  these 


THE    TREADMILL  459 

also  Cedric  must  learn  to  use.  So  a  new  phrase  was 
added  to  the  vocabulary  of  "dam-fool  talk".  "Bongie 
cowtoos"  was  the  name  of  the  operation ;  for  a  couple 
of  years  thereafter,  whenever  Corydon  and  Thyrsis 
wished  to  be  let  alone  to  discuss  the  problems  of  the 
universe,  they  would  get  the  baby  a  hammer  and  some 
nails  and  a  board,  and  repeat  that  magic  formula,  and 
the  problem  was  solved. 

Unfortunately,  however,  it  was  not  all  smooth  sailing 
in  the  carpentry-business.  There  were  mashed  thumbs 
and  sawed  fingers ;  and  then,  in  an  evil  hour,  Thyrsis 
came  upon  an  advertisement  which  told  of  a  wonderful 
new  kind  of  wall-paper  which  could  be  applied  directly 
to  laths — thus  enabling  one  to  dispense  with  plaster. 
He  sent  for  ten  or  twelve  dollars'  worth  of  this  ma 
terial,  and  he  and  Corydon  spent  a  whole  morning  mak 
ing  a  mixture  of  glue  and  flour-paste  and  water,  and 
boiling  it  in  an  iron  preserving-kettle.  But  alas,  the 
paper  would  not  paste;  and  then  they  had  a  painful 
time.  Corydon  gave  up  in  disgust,  and  went  away; 
but  Thyrsis,  to  whom  economy  was  a  kind  of  disease, 
would  not  give  up,  and  was  angry  with  the  other  for 
urging  him  to  give  up.  He  spent  a  whole  day  wrestling 
with  the  concoction,  and  gave  himself  a  headache  with 
the  ghastly  odor.  But  in  the  end  he  had  to  dump  it 
out,  and  clean  the  kettle,  and  fasten  the  paper  to  the 
lathes  with  "bongie  cowtoos".  As  the  strips  of  paper 
did  not  correspond  with  the  studding,  he  found  himself 
driving  nails  into  springy  laths,  an  operation  most 
trying  to  the  temper  of  any  man  of  letters.  One  of 
the  trials  of  this  house  forever  after  was  that  upon  the 
least  jar  a  corner  of  the  ceiling  was  liable  to  fall  loose; 
and  then  one  would  have  to  get  a  ladder,  and  climb  up 
into  a  hot  region,  and  pound  nails  into  a  broken  lath, 


460  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

with  dust  sifting  down  into  one's  eyes,  and  the  hammer 
hitting  one's  sore  thumb,  and  occasioning  exclamations 
not  at  all  suitable  for  the  ears  of  a  two-year-old  in 
telligence. 

§  7.  WHEN  the  doors  were  fitted,  and  the  windows 
set  in,  and  the  piazza  laid,  and  the  steps  built,  they 
got  down  to  the  furniture,  which  was  also  to  be  home 
made.  Thyrsis  was  gratified  beyond  telling  by  these 
tables  and  dressing-stands  and  shelves  and  book-cases, 
which  he  could  build  of  hemlock  boards  in  an  hour  or 
two,  and  which  cost  only  thirty  or  forty  cents  apiece. 
He  would  labor  with  Corydon  to  induce  her  to  share 
this  joy;  but  alas,  he  would  only  succeed  in  losing  his 
own  joy,  without  increasing  hers.  On  many  occasions 
he  attempted  such  things  as  this ;  it  was  only  after  long 
years  that  he  came  to  realize  that  Corydon's  tempera 
ment  was  the  one  fixed  fact  in  the  universe  with  which 
he  had  to  deal. 

Two  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  was  the  total 
cost  of  this  establishment  when  completed.  And  wrhile 
the  carpenter  was  putting  the  finishing  touches,  Thyrsis 
was  using  up  thirty  dollars  more  of  lumber  in  construct 
ing  himself  a  "study"  in  the  woods  near  by.  Eight  by 
ten  this  cabin  was  to  be;  it  was  to  have  a  door  and  a 
window,  and  a  little  piazza  in  front,  upon  which  the  in 
habitant  might  sit  in  fair  weather.  Also  Thyrsis  built 
for  it  a  table  and  a  bookcase ;  and  as  he  had  now  eighty 
square  feet  instead  of  forty-nine,  there  was  room  for 
a  cot  and  a  chair,  and  a  coal-stove  fourteen  inches  in 
diameter.  As  fate  would  have  it,  there  was  some  black 
paint  left  over ;  and  to  Corydon's  horror  it  was  an 
nounced  that  this  would  be  used  on  the  study.  How 
ever,  Thyrsis  insisted  that  it  was  his  study;  and  be- 


THE    TREADMILL  461 

sides,  there  was  some  red  paint  left,  with  which  he 
might  decorate  the  window  and  the  door-frame,  and 
stripe  the  edges  of  the  roof  and  the  corners.  Surely 
that  would  be  festivity  enough  for  the  most  exacting 
of  Greek  temperaments ! 

Then  came  the  rapturous  experience  of  moving  into 
these  new  mansions.  The  joy  of  having  shelves  to  put 
things  on,  and  hooks  to  hang  things  from.  Of  being  able 
to  take  books  and  manuscripts  out  of  their  trunks,  and 
not  pile  them  under  their  beds.  Of  carrying  over  their 
belongings,  and  having  everything  fit  into  the  place  that 
had  been  made  for  it ! 

Thyrsis  purchased  an  old  stove,  and  also  a  kitchen- 
range  from  a  neighbor ;  he  sank  a  barrel  in  the  spring, 
and  walled  it  round  with  cement ;  he  built  a  stand  in  the 
kitchen,  and  set  up  a  sink  and  a  little  pump. 

This  was  the  time  of  year  when  there  were  held  at 
various  places  in  the  country  what  the  neighbors  called 
"vandews".  He  and  Corydon  found  it  diverting  to  get 
the  scarecrow  nag  and  the  one-horse  shay,  and  drive 
to  some  farm-house,  where  one  might  see  the  history  of 
a  family  for  the  last  fifty  years  spread  out  upon  the 
lawn.  They  would  stand  round  in  the  cold  and  snow 
while  the  auctioneer  disposed  of  the  horses  and  cows  and 
hay  and  machinery,  waiting  until  he  came  to  the  house 
hold  objects  upon  which  they  had  set  their  eye.  So 
they  would  invest  in  some  stove-pipe,  and  a  couple  of 
ghastly  chromos  (for  the  sake  of  the  frames),  and 
some  odds  and  ends  of  crockery,  and  a  spade,  and  some 
old  rope  to  make  a  swing  for  the  baby.  They  would 
get  these  things  for  five  or  ten  cents  each,  and  get  in 
addition  all  the  excitements  of  the  bargain-hunt. 

Once  they  had  a  real  adventure — they  came  upon  a 
wonderful  old  "grandfather's  clock",  about  six  feet 


462  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

high ;  and  Corydon  exclaimed  in  rapture,  "Oh  Thyrsis, 
I'd  be  happy  for  the  rest  of  my  life  if  we  could  have  that 
clock!"  On  such  terms  it  appeared  to  Thyrsis  that 
the  clock  might  be  worth  making  a  sacrifice  for,  and  he 
got  up  the  courage  to  declare  that  he  would  offer  as 
high  as  five  dollars  for  it.  And  so  they  stood,  trembling 
with  excitement,  and  waiting. 

"Don't  lose  it,  even  if  it's  as  high  as  six  dollars !" 
whispered  Corydon ;  but  alas,  the  first  bid  for  the  clock 
was  twenty-five  dollars.  They  stood  staring  with  dis 
may,  until  the  treasure  was  sold  to  a  dealer  from  the 
city  for  the  incredible  sum  of  eighty-seven  dollars  ;  and 
then  they  drove  home,  quite  awe-stricken  by  this  sud 
den  intrusion  from  the  world  of  luxury  outside  their 
ken. 

§  8.  HOWEVER,  this  disappointment  did  not  trouble 
them  for  long;  there  were  too  many  luxuries  in  their 
own  home.  Not  very  long  after  it  was  finished,  there 
fell  a  deluge  of  rain ;  and  what  a  delight  it  was  to  listen 
to  it,  and  know  that  they  were  safe  from  it!  That 
not  only  did  they  have  a  dry  roof  over  their  head — 
but  they  were  able  to  move  about,  and  to  reach  up 
their  hands  without  peril,  and  to  sit  down  and  read 
without  a  lamp !  They  would  stand  by  the  window 
with  their  arms  about  each  other,  watching  the  rain 
beating  upon  the  fields,  and  dripping  from  the  elm 
tree,  and  flowing  in  torrents  past  the  house ;  they  would 
listen  to  it  pounding  overhead  and  streaming  off  the 
roof  before  their  faces.  They  were  dry,  quite  dry! 
All  their  belongings  were  dry — their  shoes  were  not 
mildewing,  their  books  were  not  getting  soft  and  shape 
less,  their  bed-clothing  would  be  all  right  when  night 
came! 


THE    TREADMILL  463 

The  down-pour  lasted  for  three  whole  days,  yet-  they 
enjoyed  it  all.  It  proved  to  be  a  memorable  rain  to 
Corydon,  for  it  brought  to  her  a  great  occasion — -the 
beginning  of  her  poetical  career.  It  happened  late  one 
night,  when,  as  usual,  the  cry  of  "hoodaloo  mungie" 
awakened  her  from  a  sound  slumber.  The  day  had  been 
a  particularly  hard  one,  and  the  heaviness  of  exhaus 
tion  was  upon  her.  For  a  moment  she  stared  up  into 
the  darkness,  listening  to  the  rain  close  above  her,  and 
trying  to  nerve  herself  to  put  out  her  arm  in  the  cold. 

She  shuddered  at  the  thought;  there  came  to  her  a 
perfectly  definite  impulse  of  hatred — hatred  of  the 
child,  of  its  noise  and  its  demands.  She  had  felt  it 
before — sometimes  as  a  dull,  cold  dislike,  sometimes  as 
something  passionate.  Why  should  she  have  to  sacrifice 
herself  to  this  insatiable  creature,  whom  she  did  not 
love?  What  did  it  matter  to  her  if  other  women  loved 
their  children?  She  had  wanted  life — and  was  this  life? 
At  that  moment  the  cry  of  "hoodaloo-mungie"  sym 
bolized  for  her  all  the  sordid  cares  and  nervous  agony 
of  her  existence. 

And  suddenly,  unexpectedly,  a  daring  impulse  seized 
her.  "No!"  she  thought,  and  set  her  teeth— "I'll  let 
him  cry !  I'll  cure  him  of  this — and  I'll  do  it  to-night !" 
So  she  turned  and  told  Cedric  to  go  to  sleep ;  at  which, 
of  course,  the  child  began  to  scream. 

Corydon  lay  very  still  in  the  dark,  her  eyes  wide  and 
every  nerve  tense.  She  could  not  feel,  she  could  not, 
think;  it  seemed  as  though  she  were  deprived  of  every 
sense  except  that  of  hearing;  and  in  her,  through  her, 
and  around  her  rang  a  senseless  din,  piercing,  intense, 
increasing  in  volume  every  minute,  and  completely 
drowning  out  the  beating  of  the  rain. 

"Can  I  stand  it?"  she  thought.     "Or  will  his  lungs 


464  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

burst?  And  yet,  I  must,  I  must — this  can't  go  on  for 
ever  !"  And  so  she  clenched  her  hands  and  waited.  But 
the  sounds  did  not  diminish  in  the  slightest ;  ten  minutes, 
twenty  minutes  must  have  passed,  and  the  baby  only 
seemed  to  gain  increased  power  with  each  crescendo. 

It  seemed  to  Corydon  at  last  as»though  she  had  always 
lain  like  this,  and  as  though  she.  must  for  endless  time. 
She  found  herself  getting  used  to  it  even ;  her  muscles 
relaxed.  There  came  to  her  a  sense  of  the  ludicrous 
side  of  .it.  "He  means  to  conquer  me !"  she  thought. 
"Can  I  hold  out?  If  I  only  had  something  to  think 
about,  then  I'd  be  a  match  for  him."  And  suddenly  the 
inspiration  came  to  her.  •"!'!!  write  a  poem !" 

What  should  it  be  about?  The  rain  had  been  increas 
ing  in  violence,  and  she  became  conscious  of  the  steady 
downpour ;  it  fascinated  her,  and  she  concentrated  her 
attention  upon  it,  and  began 

•"I  am  the  rain,  that  comes  in  spring!" 

So,  after  a  while,  she  found  herself  in  the  throes  of 
composition ;  she  was  eager,  excited — and  marvel  of 
marvels,  utterly  forgetful  of  the  baby !  She  had  never 
tried  to  write  verses  before;  but  it  did  not  seem  at  all 
difficult  to  her  now. 

The  poem  was  simple  and  optimistic — it  told  of  the 
beneficent  qualities  of  rain,  as  it  would  appear  to  one 
whose  roof  did  not  leak.  Somewhere  in  the  course  of 
it  there  was  this  stanza: 

"I  am  the  rain  that  comes  at  night, 
When   all  in   slumber  is   folded  light — - 
Save  one  by  weary  vigils  worn 
Who  counteth  the  drops  unto  the  morn.'* 


THE    TREADMILL  465 

This  seemed  to  her  an  impressive  bit,  and  she  wondered 
what  Thyrsis  would  think  of  it. 

There  were  eight  stanzas  altogether,  and  when  she 
finished  the  last  of  them  the  dawn  was  breaking,  and  it 
seemed  hours  since  she  had  begun.  As  for  the  baby,  he 
was  still  crying.  She  turned  and  peered  at  him ;  his 
eyelids  drooped,  and  the  crying  came  in  spasms  and 
gasps — it  sounded  very  feeble,  and  a  trifle  perfunctory. 
Obviously  he  could  not  hold  out  much  longer ;  Corydon 
would  win,  yes,  she  had  won  already.  She  lay  still,  andi 
thrills  of  happiness  went  through  her.  Was  it  the  poem, 
or  the  thought  of  her  release,  and  the  nights  of  quiet 
sleep  in  the  future? 

When  Thyrsis  came  in,  an  hour  or  two  later,  he 
found  her  huddled  up  in  blankets  on  the  floor  of  the 
living-room,  her  cheeks  bright,  her  hair  dishevelled. 
How  fascinating  she  looked  in  such  a  guise!  She  was 
eagerly  pondering  her  poem;  and  the  baby  was  sleep 
ing  quietly,  save  for  a  few  convulsive  gasps,  the  last 
stragglers  of  his  routed  forces. 

"And  oh,  Thyrsis,"  she  exclaimed,  "to-morrow  night 
he  will  only  cry  half  as  long,  and  still  less  the  next  night. 
And  soon  he  will  go  to  sleep  quietly  like  any  well 
brought-up,  civilized  baby.  And,  my  dear,  I  believe  I'm 
going  to  be  a  poetess — I  think  that  to-night  I  was  really 
inspired !" 

So  he  made  haste  to  build  a  fire,  and  then  came  and 
sat  and  listened  to  the  poem.  How  eagerly  she  waited 
for  his  verdict !  How  she  hung  upon  his  words !  And 
what  should  a  man  do  in  such  a  case — should  he  be  a 
husband  or  a  critic?  Should  he  be  an  amateur  or  a 
professional? 

But  even  as  he  hesitated,  the  damage  was  done.    "Oh, 


466  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

you  don't  like  it !"  she  cried.  "You  don't  think  it^s  good 
at  all!" 

"My  dear,"  he  argued,  "poetry  is  such  a  difficult 
thing  to  write.  And  there  are  so  many  standards — 
a  thing  can  be  good,  and  yet  not  good!  The  heights 
are  so  far  away " 

"But  oh,  how  can  I  ever  get  there,"  wailed  Corydon, 
"if  nobody  gives  me  any  encouragement?" 

§  9.  THE  time  had  now  come  for  Thyrsis  to  put  his 
job  through.  There  was  no  longer  any  excuse  for  hesi 
tation  or  delay.  The  book  had  come  to  ripeness  in  him ; 
the  birth-hour  was  at  hand,  and  he  must  go  and  have  it 
out  with  himself.  He  explained  these  things  to  Cory 
don,  sitting  beside  her  and  holding  her  hands ;  they 
ascended  once  more  to  the  heights  of  consecration ;  they 
renewed  their  vows  of  fortitude  and  faith,  and  then 
he  went  away. 

For  weeks  thereafter  he  would  be  like  the  ghost  of  a 
man  in  the  house,  haggard  and  silent  and  preoccupied. 
All  the  work  that  he  had  ever  done  in  his  life  seemed 
but  child's  play  in  comparison.  Before  this  he  had 
portrayed  the  struggles  of  men  and  women;  but  now 
he  was  to  portray  the  agony  of  a  whole  nation — his 
heart  must  beat  with  the  pulse  of  millions  of  suffering 
people.  And  the  task  was  like  a  fiend  that  came  upon 
him  in  the  night-time  and  laid  hold  of  him,  dragging 
him  away  to  sights  of  terror  and  madness.  He  was 
never  safe  from  the  thing  for  a  moment — he  conld 
never  tell  when  it  might  assail  him.  He  might  be 
washing  the  dishes,  or  wrestling  with  the  refractory 
pump ;  but  the  vision  would  come  to  him,  and  he  would 
wander  off  into  the  forest — perhaps  to  sit,  crouching 


THE    TREADMILL  467 

in  the  snow,  trembling,  and  staring  at  the  pageant  in 
his  soul. 

He  lived  in  the  midst  of  battles ;  the  smoke  of  powder 
always  in  his  nostrils,  the  crash  of  musketry  and  the 
thunder  of  cannon  in  his  ears.  He  saw  the  cavalry 
sweeping  over  the  plains,  the  infantry  crouching  behind 
intrenchments ;  he  heard  the  yells  of  the  combatants, 
the  shrieks  of  the  wounded  and  dying;  he  saw  the 
mangled  bodies,  and  the  ground  slippery  with  blood. 
New  aspects  of  the  thing  kept  coming  to  him — new 
glimpses  into  meanings  yet  untold.  They  would  come 
to  him  in  great  bursts  of  emotion,  like  tempests  that 
swept  him  away ;  and  these  things  he  had  to  wrestle 
with  and  master.  It  meant  toil,  the  like  of  which  he 
had  never  faced  before,  a  tension  of  all  his  faculties, 
that  would  last  for  hours  and  hours,  and  leave  him 
bathed  in  perspiration,  and  utterly  exhausted. 

A  scene  would  come  to  him,  in  some  moment  of  in 
sight  ;  and  he  would  drop  everything  else,  and  follow 
it.  He  would  go  over  it,  at  the  same  time  both  creating 
and  beholding  it,  at  the  same  time  both  overwhelmed 
by  it  and  controlling  it — but  above  all  things  else,  re 
membering  it !  He  would  be  like  Aladdin  in  the  palace, 
stuffing  his  pockets  with  priceless  jewels;  coming  away 
so  loaded  down  that  he  could  hardly  stagger,  and  spill 
ing  them  on  every  side.  Then,  scarcely  pausing  to 
rest,  he  would  go  back  after  what  he  had  lost ;  he  would 
grope  about,  gathering  diamonds  and  rubies  that  he 
had  all  but  forgotten — or  perhaps  coming  upon  new 
vaults  and  new  treasure-chests. 

So  he  would  labor  over  a  description,  going  over 
it  and  over  it,  not  so  much  working  it  out,  as  letting  it 
work  itself  out  and  stamp  itself  upon  his  memory.  It 
made  no  difference  how  long  the  scene  might  be,  he 


468  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

would  not  write  a  word  of  it ;  it  might  be  some  battle- 
picture,  that  would  fill  thirty  or  forty  pages — he  would 
know  it  all  by  heart,  as  Demosthenes  or  Webster  might 
have  known  an  oration.  And  only  at  the  end  would  he 
write  it  down. 

Over  some  of  the  scenes  in  this  new  book  he  labored 
thus  for  two  or  three  weeks  at  a  stretch;  there  would 
be  literally  not  a  moment  of  the  day,  nor  perhaps  of 
the  night,  when  the  thing  was  not  working  in  some  part 
of  his  mind.  He  would  think  about  it  for  hours  before 
he  fell  asleep ;  and  when  he  opened  his  eyes  it  would  be 
waiting  at  his  bedside  to  pounce  upon  him.  If  he  tried 
for  even  a  few  minutes  to  rest,  or  to  divert  his  mind 
to  some  other  work,  he  would  find  himself  ill  at  ease 
and  troubled,  with  a  sense  as  of  something  pulling  at 
him,  calling  to  him.  And  if  anything  came  to  interrupt 
him,  then  he  would  be  like  a  baker  whose  oven  grows 
cold  before  the  bread  is  half  done — it  would  be  a  sad 
labor  making  anything  out  of  that  batch  of  bread. 

§  10.  AND  this  work  he  had  to  do  as  a  married 
man,  the  father  of  a  family  and  the  head  of  a  house 
hold  ;  living  with  a  child  who  was  one  incessant  and 
irrepressible  demand  for  attention,  and  a  wife  who  was 
wrestling  with  weakness  and  sickness — eating  out  her 
heart  in  cruel  loneliness,  and  cowering  in  the  grip  of 
fiends  of  melancholia  and  despair ! 

He  had  thought  that  when  they  moved  into  the  new 
home,  their  domestic  trials  would  be  at  an  end.  But 
now  the  cruel  winter  fell  upon  them.  They  had  never 
known  what  a  winter  in  the  country  was  like ;  they 
came  to  see  why  the  farmer  had  protested  against  their 
building  in  such  a  remote  place.  There  were  many  days 
when  they  could  not  get  to  town,  and  some  when  they 


THE    TREADMILL  469 

could  not  even  get  to  the  farm-house.  Also  there  was 
the  pump,  which  was  continually  freezing,  and  necessi 
tating  long  and  troublesome  operations  before  they 
could  get  any  water. 

It  was,  as  fate  would  have  it,  the  worst  winter  in  the 
oldest  inhabitant's  memory.  The  farmer's  well  froze 
over  on  three  occasions,  and  it  had  never  frozen  before, 
so  he  declared.  For  such  weather  as  this  they  were 
altogether  unprepared ;  they  had  only  a  wood-stove,  and 
could  not  keep  a  fire  all  night ;  and  the  cheap  blankets 
they  had  bought  were  made  all  of  cotton,  and  gave  them 
almost  no  protection.  They  would  not  sleep  with  the 
windows  down ;  and  so,  for  weeks  at  a  time,  they  would 
go  to  bed  with  their  clothing,  even  their  overcoats  on ; 
and  would  pile  curtains  and  rugs  upon  these — and  even 
so,  they  would  weaken  at  two  or  three  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  shivering  and  chilled  to  the  bone. 

And  in  this  icy  room  they  would  have  to  get  up  and 
build  a  fire ;  and  it  might  be  half  an  hour  before  they 
could  get  the  house  warm.  Also,  they  had  no  facilities 
for  bathing;  and  so  little  by  little  they  began  to  lose 
their -habits  of  decency — there  were  davs  when  Cory  don 
left  her  face  unwashed,  and  forgot  to  brush  her  hair. 
Everyday,  it  seemed,  they  slipped  yet  further  down  the 
grade.  Thyrsis  would  work  until  he  was  faint  and 
exhausted,  and  then  he  would  come  over,  and  find  there 
was  nothing  ready  to  eat.  By  the  time  that  he  and 
Corydon  had  cooked  a  meal,  they  would  both  of  them 
be  ravenous,  and  they  would  sit  and  devour  their  food 
like  a  couple  of  savages.  Then,  because  they  had  over 
eaten,  they  would  have  to  rest  before  they  cleared  things 
away;  and  like  as  not  Thyrsis  would  get  to  thinking 
about  his  work,  and  go  off  and  leave  everything — and 
the  dishes  and  the  food  might  stay  up  on  the  table  until 


470  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  next  meal.  There  was  nearly  always  a  piled-up 
mass  of  dishes  and  skillets  and  sauce-pans  in  the  house 
—to  Thyrsis  these  soiled  dishes  were  the  original  source 
of  the  myth  of  Sisyphus  and  his  labor. 

And  then  there  was  the  garbage-pail  that  he  had  for 
gotten  to  empty,  and  the  lamps  he  had  neglected  to  fill, 
and  the  slop-pails  and  the  other  utensils  of  domesticity. 
There  were  the  diapers  that  somebody  had  to  wash — 
and  outside  was  always  the  bitter,  merciless  cold,  that 
drove  them  in  and  shut  them  up  with  all  this  horror. 
The  time  came,  as  the  winter  dragged  on,  when  the 
house  which  they  had  built  with  so  many  sacrifices,  and 
into  which  they  had  moved  with  such  eager  anticipations, 
came  to  seem  to  them  like  a  cave  in  which  a  couple  of 
wild  beasts  cowered  for  shelter. 

§11.  THERE  was  another  great  change  which  this 
cold  weather  effected  in  their  lives ;  it  broke  down  the 
barriers  they  had  been  at  such  pains  to  build  up  between 
them.  It  was  all  very  well  for  them  to  agree  that  they 
were  "brother  and  sister,"  and  that  it  was  impossible 
for  them  ever  to  think  of  anything  else.  But  now  'came 
a  time  when  night  after  night  the  thermometer  went  to 
ten  or  fifteen  degrees  below  zero ;  and  first  Thyrsis 
gave  more  bedding  to  Corydon — because  she  was  able 
to  suffer  more  than  he;  and  he  would  go  over  to  his 
cold  hut  alone,  and  crawl  into  a  cold  bed,  and  lie  there 
the  whole  night  through  without  a  wink  of  sleep.  But 
then,  as  the  cold  held  on  for  a  week  or  more,  the  re 
sistance  of  both  of  them  was  broken  down — they  were 
like  two  animals  which  crawl  into  the  same  hole  to  keep 
each  other  from  freezing.  They  piled  all  their  bedding 
upon  one  narrow  cot ;  and  sleeping  thus,  they  could  be 
warm.  Even  then,  they  tried  to  keep  to  the  resolution 


THE    TREADMILL  471 

tney  had  made;  but  this,  it  seemed,  was  not  within  the 
power  of  flesh  and  blood;  and  so,  once  more,  the  sex- 
factor  was  introduced  into  the  complications  of  their 
lives. 

To  Thyrsis  this  thing  was  like  some  bird  of  prey  that 
circled  in  the  sky  just  above  him — its  shadow  rilling 
him  with  a  continual  fear,  the  swish  of  its  wings  making 
him  cringe.  He  was  never  happy  about  it;  there  was 
no  time  in  his  life  when  he  was  not  in  a  state  of  inward 
war.  His  intellect  rebelled ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  there 
was  a  part  of  his  nature  that  craved  this  sex-experience 
and  welcomed  it — and  this  part,  it  seemed,  was  favored 
by  all  the  circumstances  of  life.  There  was  no  chance 
to  settle  the  matter  in  the  light  of  reason,  to  test  it  by 
any  moral  or  aesthetic  law ;  blind  fate  decreed  that  one 
part  of  him  should  have  the  shaping  of  his  character, 
the  determining  of  his  needs. 

He  tried  to  make  clear  to  himself  the  basis  of  his 
distrust.  Sexual  intercourse  as  a  habit — this  was  the 
formula  by  which  he  summed  it  up  to  himself.  To  be 
right,  to  win  the  sanction  of  the  intellect  and  the  con 
science,  the  sex-act  must  be  the  result  of  a  supreme 
creative  impulse.  Its  purpose  was  the  making  of  a 
new  soul — and  this  could  never  be  right  until  those  who 
took  that  responsibility  had  used  their  reasons,  and 
determined  that  circumstances  were  such  that  the  new 
soul  might  be  a  sound  and  free  and  happy  and  beautiful 
soul.  And  how  different  was  this  from  the  customs 
which  prevailed  under  the  sanction  of  the  "holy  bonds 
of  matrimony" !  When  sexual  intercourse  became  a 
self-indulgence,  like  the  eating  of  candy,  or  the  drink 
ing  of  liquor ;  a  thing  of  the  body,  and  the  body  alone ; 
a  thing  determined  by  physical  propinquity,  by  the 


472  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

sight  and  contact  of  the  flesh,  the  dressing  and  undress 
ing  in  the  same  room ! 

Then  again,  the  means  which  they  had  to  use  to 
prevent  conception — which  destroyed  all  spontaneity 
in  their  relationship,  and  dragged  the  thing  out  into 
the  cold  light  of  day !  And  the  continual  fear  that  they 
might  have  made  another  blunder !  Something  of  this 
sort  was  always  happening,  or  seeming  to  have  hap 
pened,  or  threatening  to  have  happened,  so  that  they 
waited  each  month  in  suspense  and  dread.  It  was  this 
which  made  the  terror  of  the  whole  matter  to  Thyrsis, 
and  had  so  much  to  do  with  his  repugnance.  They  were 
like  people  drawing  lots  for  a  death-sentence;  like 
people  who  ate  from  dishes,  one  of  which  they  knew  to 
contain  poison.  What  was  the  tragic  destiny  that  hung 
over  them — the  Nemesis  that  gripped  them,  and  forced 
them  to  take  such  a  chance? 

But  the  barriers  were  down,  and  there  was  no  build 
ing  them  up  again;  Thyrsis  never  even  tried,  because 
of  the  revelation  which  came  to  him  from  Corydon's 
side.  Corydon  was  craving,  reaching  out  hungrily  for 
something  which  she  had  not  in  herself,  and  which  life 
did  not  give  her  in  sufficiency.  She  called  this  thing 
"love" ;  and  she  had  no  hesitations  and  no  limits  to  her 
demand  for  it.  To  Thyrsis  this  "love"  was  something 
quite  else — it  was  sustenance  and  support.  To  demand 
it  was  an  act  of  weakness,  and  to  yield  it  was  a  kind  of 
spiritual  blood- transfusion.  It  was  the  first  law  of 
his  life-code  that  every  soul  must  stand  upon  its  own 
feet  and  walk  its  own  way ;  and  to  surrender  that 
spiritual  autonomy  was  the  one  blunder  for  which  there 
could  be  no  pardon. 

But  then — he  would  argue  with  himself — what  folly 
it  was  to  talk  of  such  things  in  their  position!  They 


THE    TREADMILL  473 

were  not  souls  at  all — the  life  of  the  soul  was  not  for 
them,  the  laws  of  the  soul  had  nothing  to  do  with 
them.  They  were  two  bodies — two  miserable  and  cold 
and  sick  and  tormented  bodies ;  and  with  yet  a  third 
body,  utterly  helpless  and  dependent  upon  them — in 
defiance  of  all  the  most  high-sounding  pronouncements 
about  "the  soul" ! 

So  Thyrsis  would  mock  himself  into  subjection  once 
more,  and  go  on  to  play  his  part  as  husband  and  father 
and  head  of  a  household  of  bodies.  He  would  play  the 
game  of  "love"  as  Corydon  wanted  it  played ;  he  would 
yield  to  her  demands,  he  would  gratify  her  cravings, 
he  would  force  himself  to  take  her  point  of  view.  But 
then  the  other  mood  would  come  upon  him — the  mood 
that  he  knew  to  be  the  real  expression  of  himself.  He 
would  begin  the  battle  of  his  genius  again ;  he  would 
"hear  the  echoes  afar  off,  the  thunder  of  the  captains 
and  the  shouting".  If  one  gave  one's  self  up  to  the 
body,  and  accepted  the  regimen  and  the  laws  of  the 
body,  how  should  the  soul  ever  come  to  be  free?  To 
make  such  a  concession  was  to  pass  upon  it  a  sentence 
of  life-imprisonment! 

So  would  come  to  Thyrsis  again  that  sense  of  the 
awful  tragedy  that  was  impending  in  their  lives.  Some 
day,  he  knew,  he  would  break  out  of  this  prison.  Some 
day,  he  knew,  he  would  have  to  be  himself,  and  live  his 
own  life ! 

And  meanwhile,  how  pitiful  were  Corydon's  attempts 
to  shape  him  to  her  needs,  and  to  persuade  herself  that 
she  was  succeeding  in  doing  it !  She  would  set  forth 
to  him  elaborately  how  much  he  had  improved ;  how  much 
gentler  and  more  human  he  was — in  contrast  with  that 
blind  and  stupid  and  egotistical  and  impossible  person 
she  had  first  known.  And  with  what  bitterness  Thyrsis 


474  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

would  hear  this — and  how  he  had  to  struggle  to  sup 
press  his  feeling!  For  he  knew  that  those  qualities 
which  were  so  hateful  to  her,  were  but  the  foam  cast 
up  to  the  surface  of  his  soul  by  the  seething  of  his 
genius  within.  When  it  had  ceased  altogether,  how 
placid  and  still  would  be  th  s  pool — and  what  a  beautiful 
mirror  it  would  make  fo*  Corydon  to  behold  her  own 
features  in! 

§12.  IN  later  years  they  used  to  discuss  this  prob 
lem,  and  they  could  never  be  sure  what  would  have  hap 
pened  in  their  lives — what  would  have  been  the  reaction 
of  their  different  temperaments — if  they  had  been  given 
any  fair  chance  to  live  and  grow  as  they  wanted  to. 
But  here  they  were,  mashed  together  in  this  stew-pot 
of  domesticity,  with  all  the  most  unlovely  aspects  of 
things  forced  continually  upon  their  attention.  Each 
was  in  some  way  a  handicap  and  a  torment  to  the  other 
— a  means  which  fate  used  to  limit  and  crush  and 
destroy  the  other ;  and  as  ever,  they  had  in  their  hours 
of  anguish  no  recourse  save  to  sit  down  and  reason  it 
out  together,  and  absolve  each  other  from  blame. 

Thyrsis  invented  a  phrase  whereby  he  might  make  this 
point  clear  to  Corydon,  and  keep  it  in  her  thoughts. 
The  phrase  was  "the  economic  screw" ;  it  pressed  upon 
him,  and  through  him  it  crushed  her.  All  things  that 
he  sought  to  be  and  could  not  be,  all  things  that  he 
would  not  be  and  was ;  all  that  was  hard  and  unloving 
in  him — his  irritability  and  impatience,  his  narrowness 
and  bitterness — in  all  this  he  showed  her  that  cruel 
force  that  was  destroying  them  both. 

It  was  a  hard  role  for  Thyrsis,  to  be  the  judge  and 
the  jury  and  the  executioner  of  the  stern  will  of  this 
"economic  screw".  There  was,  for  instance,  the  episode 


THE    TREADMILL  475 

of  the  "turkey-rred  table-cover",  which  became  a  classic 
in  their  later  lives.  Corydon  was  always  chafing  at  the 
bareness  of  their  little  home ;  and  going  into  the  shops 
in  the  town,  and  discovering  things  which  might  have 
made  it  lovely.  One  evil  day  she  went  alone;  and  when 
she  came  back,  Thyrsis,  as  usual,  pounced  upon  his 
mail,  and  came  upon  a  letter  from  a  magazine-editor 
whom  he  had  been  trying  to  please  with  an  article,  and 
who  now  scolded  him  mercilessly  for  his  obstinacy  and 
his  egotism  and  his  didacticism,  and  all  his  other  un- 
publishable  qualities.  Then  came  the  unwrapping  of 
the  bundles,  and  Corydon's  guileless  and  joyful  an 
nouncement  that  she  had  come  upon  a  wonderful  bar 
gain  in  the  dry-goods  store,  a  beautiful  piece  of 
"turkey-red"  cloth  which  would  serve  as  the  table-cover 
for  which  her  soul  had  been  pining — and  which  she  had 
obtained  for  the  incredibly  small  sum  of  thirty  cents ! 

Whereupon,  of  course,  Thyrsis  began  to  exclaim  in 
dismay.  Thirty  cents  was  a  third  of  all  they  had  to 
live  upon  for  a  day !  And  to  pay  it  for  a  fool  piece 
of  rag  for  which  they  had  no  earthly  need !  So  Corydon 
sank  down  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  and  dissolved  in 
floods  of  tears ;  and  at  the  next  trip  into  town  the 
"turkey-red  table-cover"  was  returned,  and  over  the 
bare  board  table  there  were  new  expositions  of  the 
theory  of  the  "economic  screw" ! 

To  these  arguments  Corydon  would  listen  and  assent. 
With  her  intellect  she  was  at  one  with  him,  and  she 
strove  to  make  this  intellect  supreme.  But  always,  deep 
underneath,  was  the  other  side  of  her  being,  that  had 
nothing  to  do  with  intellect,  but  was  pure  primitive  im 
pulse — and  that  pushed  and  drove  in  her  always,  and 
carried  her  away  the  moment  that  intellect  loosened 
its  brake.  Corydon  was  ashamed  of  this  primitive  self 


476  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

— she  was  always  repudiating  it,  always  shutting  her 
eyes  to  it.  There  was  no  way  to  wound  her  so  deeply 
as  to  posit  its  reality  and  identify  it  with  her. 

She  was  always  fighting  to  make  her  temperament  like 
Thyrsis';  she  despised  her  own  temperament  utterly, 
and  set  up  his  qualities  as  her  ideal.  He  was  self-con 
tained  and  masterful ;  he  knew  What  he  wanted  and  how 
to  get  it;  he  was  not  dependent  upon  anyone  else-,-  he 
needed  no  one's  approval  or  admiration ;  he  could  con 
trol  his  emotions,  and  destroy  those  that  inconvenienced 
him.  So  Corydon  must  be  these  things  also ;  she  was 
these  things,  and  no  one  must  gainsay  it!  And  if  ever 
she  had  felt  or  wished  or  said  or  done  anything  else — 
that  was  all  misunderstanding  or  delusion  or  accident ; 
she  would  repudiate  it  with  grief  and  indignation,  and 
proclaim  herself  the  creature  of  pure  reason  that  every 
person  ought  to  be ! 

But  then  would  come  something  that  appealed  to 
her  emotions — to  her  love  of  beauty,  her  craving  for 
joy;  and  there  in  a  flash  was  the  primitive  self  again. 
The  task  of  compelling  Corydon  to  economy  reminded 
her  husband  of  a  toy  which  had  been  popular  in  his 
childhood  days.  The  name  of  it  was  "Pigs  in  Clover" ; 
there  were  five  little  balls  which  you  had  to  coax  into 
a  narrow  entrance,  and  while  you  were  getting  the  last 
one  in,  the  other  four  were  almost  certain  to  roll  out. 
It  was  a  labor  of  hours  to  get  Corydon  to  recognize 
an  unpleasant  fact;  and  then — the  next  day  she  had 
forgotten  it.  There  were  some  things  about  himself  and 
his  life  that  he  could  never  get  her  to  understand ;  for 
instance,  his  preoccupation  with  the  newspaper — that 
symbol  of  all  that  was  hateful  in  life.  Just  then  was 
the  beginning  of  the  Russian  revolution ;  and  to  Thyrsis 
the  Russian  revolution  was  like  the  coming  of  relief  to 


THE   TREADMILL  477 

a  shipwrecked  mariner.  It  was  a  personal  thing  to  him 
— the  overthrow  of  a  horror  that  pressed  upon  the  life 
of  every  human  being  upon  earth.  And  so  each  day  he 
hungered  for  the  news,  and  when  the  paper  came  he 
would  pounce  upon  it. 

"Now  dearest,"  he  would  say,  "please  don't  disturb 
me.  I  want  to  read." 

"All  right,"  she  would  answer;  and  five  minutes 
would  pass. 

Then — "Do  you  want  potatoes  for  supper,  Thy rsis  ?" 

"Yes,  dear.     But  I'm  reading  now." 

"All  right."     And  then  another  five  minutes. 

"Thyrsis,  who  was  Boadicea?" 

"I'm  reading  now,  dearest." 

"Oh  yes."    And  then  another  five  minutes. 

"Thyrsis,  do  you  spell  choke  with  an  a  ?" 

At  which  Thyrsis  would  put  down  the  paper.  "Tell 
me,  Corydon — isn't  there  something  I  can  do  so  that 
you  won't  interrupt  me?" 

Instantly  a  look  of  pain  would  sweep  across  her 
face.  "Do  you  have  to  speak  to  me  like  that,  Thyrsis? 
If  you'd  only  just  tell  me,  kindly  and  pleasantly " 

"But  I've  told  you  three  or  four  times!' 

"Thyrsis!    How  can  you  say  that?" 

"But  didn't  I?" 

"Why,  of  course  not !" 

And  then  they  would  have  an  argument.  He  would 
bring  up  each  case  and  confront  her  with  it;  and  how 
very  unloving  a  procedure  was  that — and  how  exasper 
ating  was  his  manner  as  he  did  it! 

§  13.  THEN  again,  Corydon  would  be  going  into 
town  to  do  some  shopping;  and  he  would  ask  her  to- 
bring  out  the  afternoon  paper.  It  would  be  the  day 


478  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  the  October  massacre,  for  instance ;  and  he  would 
be  on  fire  for  the  next  batch  of  news.  He  would  explain 
this  to  her;  he  would  tell  her  again  and  again — what 
ever  else  she  forgot,  she  must  remember  the  afternoon 
paper.  He  would  walk  out  to  meet  her,  burning  with 
impatience;  and  he  would  ask  for  the  paper,  and  see 
a  blank  look  come  over  her  face. 

Then,  of  course,  he  would  scold.  He  had  certain 
phrases — "How  perfectly  unspeakable !  Perfectly  par 
alyzing  !"  How  she  hated  these  phrases ! 

"I  had  so  many  things  to  get !"  she  would  exclaim. 
"But  only  one  thing  for  me,  Corydon !" 
"Everything  is  for  you — just  as  much  as  for  my 
self  !      All    these    groceries — look    at   the   bundles !      I 

haven't  had  a  single  moment " 

"But  how  many  moments  does  it  take  to  buy  a  news 
paper?" 

"But  Thyrsis " 

"And  how  many  times  would  I  have  to  tell  you? 
Have  I  got  to  go  into  town  myself,  just  for  the  sake 
of  a  newspaper?" 

"I  tell  you  I  tried  my  very  best  to  remember  it " 

"But  what's  the  matter  with  you?  Is  your  mind 
getting  weak?" 

And  then  like  as  not  Corydon  would  burst  into  tears. 
"Oh,  I  think  you  are  a  brute !"  she  would  cry.  "A  per 
fect  brute!" 

Or  else,  perhaps,  she  would  grow  angry,  and  they 
would  rail  at  each  other,  exchanging  recriminations. 

"I  think  I  have  burdens  enough  in  my  life,"  he  would 
exclaim.  "I've  a  right  to  some  help  from  you." 

"You  have  no  sense  of  proportion!"  she  would  an 
swer.  "You  are  impossible !  You  would  drive  any  saint 
to  distraction." 


THE    TREADMILL  479 

"Perhaps  so.  But  I  can't  drive  you  anywhere,  and 
I'm  sick  of  trying." 

"Oh,  if  you  only  weren't  such  a  talker !  You  talk — 
talk— talk!" 

And  all  the  while  they  did  this,  what  grief  was  in  the 
depths  of  them !  And  afterwards,  what  ghastly  wounds 
in  Corydon's  soul,  that  had  to  be  bound  up  and  tended 
and  healed !  The  pity  of  it,  the  shame  of  it — that  they 
should  be  able  to  descend  to  such  sordidness !  That 
their  love,  which  they  had  planned  as  a  noble  temple, 
should  turn  out  an  ugly  hovel! 

"Oh  Thyrsis !"  the  girl  would  cry.  "The  idea  that 
you  should  think  less  of  my  soul  than  of  an  old  news 
paper  !" 

"But  that  is  not  so,  dearest,"  he  would  answer.  He 
would  try  to  explain  to  her  how  much  the  newspaper 
had  meant  to  him,  and  just  why  his  annoyance  had  got 
the  better  of  him.  So  they  would  rehearse  the  scene 
over  again ;  and  like  as  not  their  irritation  would  sweep 
over  them,  and  before  they  realized  it  they  would  find 
themselves  disputing  once  more. 

Thyrsis  would  be  making  a  desperate  attempt  to 
bring  her  to  a  realization  of  his  difficulties ;  he  would 
be  in  the  midst  of  pouring  out  some  eloquence,  when  she 
would  interrupt  him. 

"But  Thyrsis,  wait  a  moment — you  do  not  under 
stand  !" 

"I  am  speaking!"  he  would  say. 

"But,  Thyrsis " 

"I  am  speaking !"     He  would  not  be  interrupted. 

But  then  would  come  a  time  when  they  sat  down  to 
gether  and  talked  all  this  out,  perceiving  it  as  one  more 
aspect  of  the  disharmony  of  their  temperaments.  It 
was  no  fault  of  either  of  them,  they  would  agree ;  it 


480  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

was  just  that  they  were  different.  Thy r sis  had  a  simile 
that  he  used — "It's  a  marriage  between  a  butterfly  and 
a  hippopotamus.  You  don't  blame  the  butterfly  because 
it  can't  get  down  into  the  water  and  snort;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  when  the  hippopotamus  tries  to  flap  his 
wings  and  flit  about  among  the  flowers,  he  doesn't  make 
a  success  of  it." 

There  would  be  times  when  he  took  Corydon's  point 
of  view  entirely.  She  was  beautiful  and  good;  her 
naivete  and  guilelessness  were  the  essence  of  her  charm ; 
and  how  preposterous  it  was  to  expect  her  to  think 
about  newspapers,  or  to  be  familiar  with  the  price  of 
beefsteaks  !  As  for  him — he  was  a  blundering  creature, 
dull  and  pragmatical ;  he  was  a  great  spiny  monster 
that  she  had  drawn  up  from  the  ocean-depths.  She 
would  cut  off  his  spines,  but  at  once  they  grew  out 
again ;  she  could  do  nothing  with  him  at  all ! 

But  then  she  would  protest.  "It's  not  so  bad  as  that, 
Thyrsis.  You  have  your  work." 

"Yes,  that's  it,"  he  would  answer.  "My  work !  I'm 
just  a  thinking-machine.  I'm  fit  for  nothing  else.  And 
here  I  am — married!" 

He  would  say  that,  and  he  would  mean  it;  he  would 
try  to  act  upon  the  conviction.  Of  course  Corydon's 
nature  was  a  thing  more  lovely  than  his ;  and,  of  course, 
it  ought  to  have  its  way,  to  grow  in  freedom  and  joy. 
But  alas — there  was  "the  economic  screw" !  His  quali 
ties — hateful  though  they  might  be — were  the  product 
of  stern  conditions ;  they  were  the  qualities  which  had 
to  dominate  in  their  lives,  if  they  were  to  survive  in  the 
grim  struggle  for  life. 

§  14.  IT  was,  as  always,  their  tragedy  that  they  had 
no  means  of  communicating,  except  through  suffering; 


THE    TREADMILL  481 

they  had  no  work,  and  they  had  no  art,  and  they  had 
no  religion.  To  Thyrsis  it  seemed  that  this  last  was 
the  supreme  need  of  their  lives ;  but  it  was  quite  in  vain 
that  he  tried  to  supply  it.  He  had  no  theologies  to 
offer,  but  he  had  a  rough  working  faith  that  served 
his  needs.  He  had  a  way  of  prayer — informal  prayers, 
to  the  undiscovered  gods — "Oh  infinite  Holiness  of  life, 
I  seek  to  be  reminded  of  Thee !"  He  would  contemplate 
their  failures  and  agonies  and  despairs,  and  floods  of 
pity  would  well  up  in  him ;  and  then  he  would  come  back 
to  Corydon,  seeking  to  make  these  things  real  to  her. 
But  this  he  could  never  do — he  could  never  carry  her 
with  him,  he  could  never  find  anything  with  her  but 
failure  and  disappointment. 

This  was,  in  part,  the  outrage  that  the  creed-mongers 
had  done  to  her ;  with  their  dead  formulas  and  their 
grotesque  legends  and  their  stupid  bigotries  they  had 
sullied  and  defaced  all  the  symbols  of  religion — they 
had  made  a  noble  temple  into  a  sepulchre  of  dead  bones. 
They  had  taken  her  by  force,  when  she  was  a  child, 
and  dragged  her  into  it,  and  filled  her  with  terror  and 
loathing.  To  abandon  the  language  of  metaphor,  they 
had  sent  her  to  a  Protestant-Episcopal  Sunday-school, 
where  a  vinegary  spinster  had  taught  her  the  catechism 
and  the  ten  commandments.  And  so  forever  after  the 
whole  content  of  Christianity  was  a  thing  alien  and 
hateful  to  her.  », 

But  also,  in  their  disharmony  was  something  even 
more  fundamental.  Corydon's  emotions  did  not  come  in 
the  same  way  as  her  husband's.  With  her  a  joy  had  to 
be  a  spontaneous  thing;  there  could  be  no  reasoning 
about  it,  and  it  was  not  the  product  nor  the  occasion 
of  any  act  of  will.  In  fact,  if  anyone  were  to  say  to 
Corydon,  "Come,  let  us  experience  a  certain  emotion"- 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

then  straightway  it  would  become  certain  that  she  might 
^experience  any  emotion  in  the  world,  save  only  that  one. 

Thyrsis  told  himself  that  he  was  to  blame  for  this, 
having  destroyed  her  spontaneity  in  the  very  beginning. 
JBut  how  was  he  to  have  known  that,  understanding  as 
lie  did  no  temperament  but  his  own,  being  powerless  to 
handle  any  tools  but  his  own?  The  process  of  his 
soul's  life  was  to  tell  himself  all  his  vices  over ;  and  so 
he  would  become  filled  with  hatred  of  himself,  and  would 
forthwith  evolve  into  something  different.  But  with 
Corydon,  this  method  produced,  not  rage  and  resolu 
tion,  but  only  black  despair.  The  process  of  Corydon's 
soul-life  was  that  some  one  else  should  come  to  her,  and 
tell  her  that  she  was  radiant  and  exquisite ;  and  straight 
way  she  would  become  these  things,  and  yet  more,  of 
them ;  and  until  such  a  person  came  to  her,  all  her  soul's 
life  stood  still. 

This  was  illustrated  whenever  there  was  any  misun 
derstanding  between  them,  any  crisis  of  unhappiness  or 
fit  of  melancholia.  It  was  quite  in  vain  at  such  times 
that  Thyrsis  would  ask  her  to  sweep  these  things  aside 
^nd  forget  them ;  it  was  disastrous  to  suggest  that  she 
put  any  blame  upon  herself,  or  scold  herself  into  a  dif 
ferent  attitude.  He  might  take  days  to  make  up  his 
mind  to  do  what  he  had  to  do — yet  that  fit  of  misery 
would  last  until  he  had  come  and  done  it.  He  had  to 
put  his  arms  about  her,  and  make  her  realize  that  she 
was  precious  to  him,  that  she  was  necessary  to  him,  that 
he  loved  her  and  appreciated  her  and  believed  in  her ; 
so,  and  so  only,  would  the  current  of  her  life  begin 
once  more  to  flow. 

And  why  could  he  not  do  this  more  quickly  ?  Why  did 
he  have  to  wait  until  she  had  suffered  agonies  ?  Why  did 
he  have  to  be  dragged  to  it  by  the  hair  of  his  head,  as 


THE    TREADMILL  48S 

it  were — as  a  means  of  keeping  her  from  going  insane 
from  misery?  Was  it  that  he  did  not  really  love  her? 
Mocking  voices  in  his  soul  told  him  that  was  it — but 
he  knew  it  was  not  so.  He  loved  her ;  but  he  loved  her 
in  his  way,  and  that  was  not  her  way.  And  how  shall 
one  explain  that  strange  impulse  in  the  heart  of  man* 
that  makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  be  content  with 
anything  that  is  upon  the  earth — that  makes  him  rest 
less  in  the  presence  of  beauty  and  love  and  joy,  and  all 
those  things  with  which  he  so  obviously  ought  to  be 
content? 

It  is  so  clearly  irrational  and  unjustifiable;  and  yet 
that  impulse  continues  to  drive  him  forth,  as  it  drove 
him  to  destroy  the  statues  in  the  Athenian  temples,  and 
to  burn  the  silken  robes  and  the  jewelled  treasures  in 
the  public-squares  of  Venice.  One  contemplates  the 
thing  in  its  most  unlovely  aspects — in  the  form  of 
Simeon  Stylites  upon  his  pillar,  devoured  by  worms,  or 
of  Bernard  Gui,  with  his  racks  and  his  thumb-screws  and 
his  "secular  arm" — and  it  seems  the  very  culmination  of 
all  human  madness  and  horror.  And  yet,  it  does  not 
cease  to  come ;  and  he  upon  whom  it  seizes  may  not 
free  himself  by  any  power  of  his  will,  by  any  cunning 
of  his  wit ;  and  no  agony  of  yearning  and  grief  may  be 
sufficient  to  enable  him  to  love  a  woman  as  a  woman  de 
sires  to  be  loved. 

§  15.  THYRSIS  would  work  over  the  book  until  he 
was  utterly  exhausted;  and  then,  limp  as  a  rag,  he 
would  come  back  to  the  world  of  reality  and  face  these 
complications.  He  needed  to  rest,  he  needed  to  be 
soothed  and  comforted  and  sung  to  sleep ;  he  needed  to 
receive — and  instead  he  had  to  give.  Sometimes  he 
wondered  vaguely  if  this  might  not  have  been  otherwise  ; 


484  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

he  knew  nothing  about  women — but  surely  there  might 
have  been,  somewhere  in  the  world,  some  woman  who 
would  have  understood,  and  would  have  asked  nothing 
from  him.  But  he  dwelt  on  that  thought  but  seldom, 
for  it  seemed  a  kind  of  treason ;  he  was  not  married  to 
any  such  hypothetical  woman — he  was  married  to  Cory- 
don,  and  it  was  Corydon  he  had  to  save  from  the 
wolves. 

So,  time  after  time,  he  would  come  back  to  her,  and 
take  the  cup  of  her  pain  in  his  trembling  hands,  and 
put  it  to  his  lips  and  drain  it  to  the  dregs.  He  would 
sit  with  her,  and  hear  the  tale  of  her  struggles,  he 
would  fan  the  sparks  of  his  exhausted  emotions  into 
flame,  so  that  she  might  warm  herself  by  the  glow.  And 
when  the  burden  became  too  great  for  him,  when  the 
black  floods  of  anguish  and  despair  which  she  poured 
out  upon  him  threatened  to  engulf  him  altogether — 
then  he  would  tramp  away  into  the  forest,  or  out  upon 
the  snow-encrusted  hills,  and  call  up  the  demons  of  his 
soul  once  more,  and  proclaim  himself  unconquered  and 
unconquerable.  He  would  spread  his  wings  to  the  glory 
of  his  vision ;  he  would  feel  again  the  surge  and  sweep 
of  it,  he  would  sing  aloud  with  the  power  of  it,  and 
pledge  himself  anew  to  live  for  it — if  need  be  even  to 
die  for  it. 

The  world  was  trying  to  crush  it  in  him ;  the  world 
hated  it  and  feared  it,  and  was  bound  that  it  should 
not  live;  and  Thyrsis  had  sworn  to  save  it — and  so 
the  issue  was  joined.  He  would  hearten  himself  for 
the  struggle — he  would  fling  himself  into  the  thick  of 
it,  again  and  again ;  he  would  summon  up  that  thing 
which  he  called  his  Genius,  that  fountain  of  endless 
force  that  boiled  up  within  him.  Whatever  strength 
they  brought  against  him,  he  could  match  it ;  he  might 


THE    TREADMILL  485 

be  knocked  down,  trampled  upon,  left  for  dead  upon 
the  field,  but  he  could  rise  and  renew  the  conflict!  He 
would  talk  to  himself,  he  would  call  aloud  to  himself, 
he  would  repeat  to  himself  formulas  of  exhortation, 
cries  of  defiance,  proclamations  of  resolve.  He  would 
summon  his  enemies  before  him,  sometimes  in  hosts, 
sometimes  as  individuals — all  those  who  ever  in  his  life 
had  mocked  and  taunted  him,  scolded  him  and  threatened 
him.  He  would  shake  his  clenched  fists  at  them;  they 
might  as  well  understand  it — they  could  never  conquer 
him,  not  all  the  power  they  could  bring  would  suffice! 
He  would  call  upon  posterity  also ;  he  would  summon 
his  friends  and  lovers  of  the  future,  to  give  him  com 
fort  in  his  sore  distress.  Was  it  not  for  them  that  he 
was  laboring — that  they  might  some  day  feed  their  souls 
upon  his  faith? 

Thyrsis  would  think  of  the  "Song  of  Roland",  re 
calling  that  heroic  figure  and  his  three  days'  labor : 
when  he  had  read  that  poem,  his  heart  had  seemed 
to  throb  with  pain  every  time  that  Roland  lifted  his 
sword-arm.  He  would  think  of-  the  old  blind  "Samson 
Agonistes" ;  he  would  think  of  the  Greeks  at  Ther 
mopylae,  of  the  siege  of  Haarlem.  History  was  full  of 
such  tales  of  the  agonies  that  men  had  endured  for  the 
sake  of  their  faith ;  and  why  should  he  expect  exemp 
tion,  why  should  he  shrink  from  the  fiery  test? 

§  16.  So  he  lived  and  fought  two  battles,  one  within 
and  one  without ;  and  little  by  little  these  two  became 
merged  in  his  imagination.  He  had  conceived  a  figure 
which  should  embody  the  War ;  and  that  figure  had  come 
to  be  himself. 

The  War  of  which  he  was  writing  had  come  upon 
a  people  unsuspecting  and  unprepared;  they  had  not 


486  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

sought  it  nor  desired  it,  they  did  not  love  it,  they  did 
not  understand  it.  But  the  nation  must  be  preserved; 
and  so  they  set  out  to  forge  themselves  into  a  sword. 
They  had  wealth,  and  they  poured  it  out  lavishly ;  and 
they  had  enthusiasm — whole  armies  of  young  men  came 
forward.  They  were  uniformed  and  armed  and  drilled, 
and  one  after  another  they  marched  out,  with  banners 
waving,  and  drums  rolling,  and  hearts  beating  high  with 
hope;  and  one  after  another  they  met  the  enemy,  and 
were  swallowed  up  in  carnage  and  destruction,  and  came 
reeling  back  in  defeat  and  despair.  It  happened  so 
often  that  the  whole  land  moaned  with  the  horror  of  it 
— there  was  Bull  Run  and  then  again  Bull  Run,  and 
there  was  the  long  Peninsula  Campaign — an  entire  year 
of  futility  and  failure ;  and  there  was  the  ghastly 
slaughter  of  Fredericksburg,  and  the  blind  confusion 
of  Chancellorsville,  and  the  bitter  disappointment  of 
Antietam. 

Thyrsis  wished  to  portray  all  this  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  humble  private,  who  got  none  of  the  glory, 
and  expected  none,  but  only  suffering  and  toil ;  whose 
lot  it  was  to  march  and  countermarch,  to  delve  and 
sweat  in  the  trenches,  to  be  stifled  by  the  heat  and 
drenched  by  the  rain  and  frozen  by  the  cold ;  to  wade 
through  seas  of  blood  and  anguish,  to  be  wounded  and 
captured  and  imprisoned,  to  be  lured  by  victory  and 
blasted  by  defeat.  And  into  it  all  he  was  pouring  the 
distillation  of  his  own  experiences.  For  there  was  not 
much  of  it  that  he  had  not  known  in  his  own  person. 
Surely  he  had  known  what  it  was  to  be  cold  and  hungry ; 
surely  he  had  known  what  it  was  to  be  lured  by  victory 
and  blasted  by  defeat.  He  had  watched  by  the  death 
bed  of  his  dearest  dreams,  he  had  listened  to  the  moaning 
of  multitudes  of  imprisoned  hopes.  He  had  known 


THE    TREADMILL  487 

what  it  was  to  set  before  him  a  purpose,  and  to  cling* 
to  it  in  spite  of  obloquy  and  hatred;  he  had  known 
what  it  was  to  suffer  until  his  forehead  throbbed,  and 
all  things  reeled  and  swam  before  his  eyes.  He  had 
known  also  what  it  was  to  sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  the 
future,  and  to  see  others,  who  thought  of  no  one  but 
themselves,  preying  upon  him,  and  upon  the  community* 
and  living  in  luxury  and  enjoying  power. 

Little  by  little,  as  he  studied  this  War,  Thyrsis  had 
come  upon  a  strange  and  sinister  fact  about  it. 
Roughly  speaking,  the  population  of  the  country  might 
have  been  divided  into  two  classes.  There  were  those 
to  whom  the  Union  was  precious,  and  who  gave  their 
labor  and  their  lives  for  it;  they  starved  and  fought 
and  agonized  for  it,  and  came  home,  worn,  often  crip 
pled,  and  always  poor.  On  the  other  hand  there  were 
some  who  had  cared  nothing  for  the  Union,  but  were 
finding  their  chance  to  grow  rich  and  to  establish  them 
selves  in  the  places  of  power.  They  were  selling  shoddy 
blankets  and  paper  shoes  to  the  government ;  they  were 
speculating  in  cotton  and  gold  and  food.  There  were 
a  few  exceptions  to  this,  of  course;  but  for  the  most 
part,  when  one  came  to  study  the  gigantic  fortunes 
which  were  corrupting  the  nation,  he  discovered  that 
it  was  just  here  they  had  begun. 

So  this  was  the  curious  and  ironic  fact;  the  nation 
had  been  saved — but  only  to  be  handed  over  to  the 
money-changers!  And  these  now  possessed  it  and 
dominated  it;  and  a  new  generation  had  come  forward,, 

which  knew  not  how  these  things  had  come  to  be 

which  knew  only  the  money-changers  and  their  power. 
And  who  was  there  to  tell  them  of  the  War,  and  all 
that  the  War  had  meant?  Who  was  there  to  make 


488  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

that  titan  agony  real  to  them,  to  point  them  to  the 
high  destinies  of  the  Republic? 

Along  with  his  war-books,  Thyrsis  was  reading  his 
daily  newspaper,  which  came  to  him  freighted  with  the 
cynicism  of  the  hour.  It  was  when  the  revelations  of 
corruption  in  business  and  political  affairs  were  at 
their  flood;  high  and  low,  in  towns  and  cities,  in  states 
and  in  the  nation  itself,  one  saw  that  the  government 
of  the  country  had  been  bought.  Everywhere  through 
out  the  land  Mammon  sat  upon  the  throne,  and  men 
cringed  before  him — there  was  only  persecution  and 
mockery  for  those  who  believed  in  the  things  for  which 
America  stood  to  all  the  world. 

And  this  new  Lord,  who  had  purchased  the  people, 
and  held  them  in  bond,  was  extracting  a  toll  of  suffer 
ing  and  privation,  of  accident  and  disease  and  death, 
that  was  worse  than  the  agony  of  many  wars.  The 
whole  land  was  groaning  and  sweating  beneath  the  bur 
den  of  it ;  and  Thyrsis,  who  shared  the  pain,  and  knew 
the  meaning  of  it,  was  sick  with  the  responsibility  it 
put  upon  him,  yearning  for  a  thousand  voices  with 
which  he  might  cry  the  truth  aloud. 

Some  one  must  bring  America  face  to  face  with  its 
soul  again ;  and  who  was  there  to  do  it — who  was  there 
that  was  even  trying?  Thyrsis  had  seen  the  statues  of 
St.  Gaudens,  and  he  knew  there  was  one  man  who  had 
dreamed  the  dream  of  his  country.  But  who  was  there 
to  put  it  into  song,  or  into  story,  that  the  young  might 
read?  Like  the  newspapers  and  the  churches,  the 
authors  had  sold  out;  they  were  writing  for  matinee- 
girls,  and  for  the  Pullman-car  book-trade;  and  mean 
time  the  civilization  of  America  was  sliding  down  into 
the  pit ! 

So  here  again  was  War !     Here  again  were  pain  and 


THE    TREADMILL  489 

sickness,  hunger  and  cold,  solitude  and  despair,  to  be 
endured  and  defied ;  death  itself  to  be  faced — madness 
even,  and  soul-decay!  Armies  of  men  had  gone  out, 
had  laid  themselves  down  and  filled  up  the  ditches  with 
their  bodies,  to  make  a  bridge  for  Freedom  to  pass  on. 
And  the  ditches  were  not  yet  full — another  life  was 
needed ! 

Nor  must  he  think  himself  too  good  for  the  sacrifice ; 
there  had  been  greater  men  than  he,  no  doubt,  burned 
up  in  the  Wilderness,  and  blown  to  pieces  by  the  cannon 
at  "Bloody  Angle" ;  there  had  been  dreamers  of  mighty 
dreams  among  them — and  they  were  dead,  and  all  their 
dreams  were  dead.  And  neither  must  he  love  his  own 
too  dearly ;  there  had  been  women  who  had  suffered  and 
died  in  that  War,  and  babes  who  had  perished  by  tens 
of  thousands ;  and  they,  too,  had  been  born  with  agony, 
had  been  loved  and  yearned  for,  and  wept  and  prayed 
for. 

So,  out  of  the  dead  past,  were  voices  calling  to 
Thyrsis ;  he  heard  them  in  the  night-time  as  one  mighty 
symphony  of  grief.  They  had  died  for  nothing,  un 
less  the  Republic  should  be  saved,  unless  their  dream 
of  freedom  and  justice  could  be  made  real.  And  for 
what  was  the  poet  but  that?  So  that  the  new  genera 
tions  might  know  what  their  fathers  had  done — that 
the  youth  of  America  might  be  roused  and  thrilled 
once  more!  Surely  it  could  not  be  that  the  land  was 
all  sunk  in  selfishness  and  unfaith — that  there  were  no 
longer  any  generous  souls  who  could  be  stirred  by  a 
trumpet-call,  and  led  forth  to  strike  a  new  blow  for 
the  great  hope  of  Humanity  ! 

§  17.  THE  long  winter  dragged  by,  and  the  fury 
of  it  seemed  to  increase;  they  were  as  if  besieged  by 


490  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

demons  of  cold  and  storm.  There  came  another  bliz 
zard,  and  the  snows  drifted  down  to  their  hollow  by 
the  edge  of  the  woods,  so  that  it  was  two  days  before 
they  could  get  out,  even  to  the  farm-house.  And  there 
was  no  place  for  them  to  walk — a  path  from  their 
house  to  Thyrsis'  study  was  a  labor  of  half  a  day  to 
dig.  Also  Corydon  caught  a  cold,  which  ran  in  due 
course  through  the  little  family,  and  added  to  their 
misery  and  discomfort. 

The  snow  seemed  to  be  symbolical,  walling  them  in 
from  all  the  world.  "There  is  no  help",  it  seemed  to 
say  to  them ;  whatever  strength  they  got  they  must 
wring  out  of  their  own  hearts.  Here  in  this  place, 
it  seemed  to  Thyrsis,  he  learned  the  real  meaning  of 
Winter ;  he  saw  it  as  primitive  man  had  seen  it,  a  cruel 
and  merciless  assailant,  a  fiend  that  came  ravening, 
dealing  destruction  and  death.  He  thought  of  the  ode 
by  Thomas  Campbell — 

"Archangel!     Power  of  desolation! 

Fast  descending  as  thou  art, 
Say,  hath  mortal  invocation 

Spells  to  touch  thy  stony  heart?" 

Surely  no  Runic  Odin,  who  "howled  his  war-song  to  the 
gale",  no  Lapland  savage  who  cowered  in  his  hut,  ever 
panted  for  the  respite  of  the  spring-time  more  than 
these  two  lovers  in  their  tiny  cottage. 

It  was  evident  that  Corydon  was  going  down-hill 
under  the  strain.  She  became  more  and  more  nervous 
and  wretched,  her  headaches  and  her  fits  of  exhaustion 
were  more  frequent.  Then,  too,  her  old  mental  trouble, 
the  habit  of  "thinking  things",  was  plaguing  her  again. 
She  would  come  to  Thyrsis  with  long  accounts  of  her 


THE    TREADMILL  491 

psychological  entanglements,  and  he  would  patiently 
unravel  the  skein.  Or  sometimes,  if  he  was  very  tired, 
he  might  give  some  signs  of  a  desire  to  escape  the  or 
deal;  and  then  he  would  see  a  look  of  terror  stealing 
into  Corydon's  eyes.  So  these  things  were  real  after 
all — they  were  real  even  to  Thy r sis  ! 

One  morning  he  opened  his  eyes,  and  looked  from  his 
study-window,  to  find  that  another  heavy  snow  had 
fallen ;  and  when  he  had  dressed  and  gone  over  to  the 
house,  he  found  Corydon  in  bed.  She  complained  of  a 
headache,  and  had  had  chills  during  the  night,  and  was 
now  quite  evidently  feverish.  He  was  alarmed,  and 
after  he  had  made  her  as  comfortable  as  he  could,  he 
dressed  the  baby  and  took  him  upon  his  shoulder,  and 
made  his  way  with  difficulty  to  the  farm-house.  He 
left  the  baby  there,  and  with  a  horse  and  sleigh  set  out 
for  town.  The  horse  had  to  walk  all  the  way,  and 
several  times  the  sleigh  was  upset  in  the  drifts,  so  that 
it  was  two  hours  before  he  reached  his  destination.  As 
the  doctor  was  out  upon  his  rounds,  he  had  to  wait  a 
couple  of  hours  more — and  then  only  to  learn  that  the 
man  could  not  possibly  attempt  the  trip.  He  had 
several  patients  who  were  dangerously  ill,  and  he  had 
to  be  on  hand. 

He  sent  Thyrsis  to  another  doctor,  but  this  one  said 
exactly  the  same ;  and  so  the  boy  spent  the  day  wander 
ing  about  the  town.  The  thought  of  Corydon's  lying 
there  alone,  helpless  and  suffering,  made  him  wild ;  but 
everywhere  he  met  with  the  same  response — the  cold 
weather  had  apparently  brought  an  epidemic  of  disease, 
and  there  was  no  doctor  in  the  place  who  could  spare 
three  or  four  hours  to  make  the  long  journey  in  the 
snow. 

So  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  go  back. 


492  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

The  farmer's  wife  offered  to  take  care  of  the  baby 
over  night,  and  he  went  down  to  the  cottage  alone, 
where  he  found  Corydon  much  worse.  He  sat  and  held 
her  hand,  a  terror  clutching  at  his  heart ;  and  all  night 
long  he  sat  and  tended  her — he  filled  hot  water  bottles 
when  she  was  chilled,  and  got  ice  when  she  was  hot, 
and  made  cool  lemonade,  and  prepared  tidbits  and 
tempted  her  to  eat.  He  would  whisper  to  her  and  soothe 
her ;  and  later,  when  she  fell  into  a  doze,  he  sat  nodding 
in  his  chair  and  shivering  with  cold,  but  afraid  to  touch 
the  fire  for  fear  of  disturbing  her. 

Then,  towards  dawn,  she  wakened;  and  Thyrsis  was 
almost  beside  himself  with  anguish  and  fear — for  she 
was  delirious,  and  did  not  know  where  she  was,  or  what 
she  was  doing.  She  kept  talking  as  if  to  the  baby — 
in  their  baby-talk.  Thyrsis  would  listen,  until  he  would 
choke  up  with  tears. 

He  left  her,  and  went  up  to  the  farm,  and  got  the 
horse  and  sleigh  again,  and  drove  to  another  town. 
It  made  no  difference  what  doctor  he  got — to  Thyrsis 
all  doctors  were  alike,  the  keepers  of  the  keys  of  health. 
After  several  hours'  pursuit  he  found  that  this  man 
also  was  busy.  All  he  could  say  was  that  he  would  try 
to  get  out  that  night. 

So  Thyrsis  went  back  again,  to  find  his  wife  with 
flushed  face,  and  beads  of  perspiration  upon  her  fore 
head;  now  sitting  up  and  babbling  aimlessly,  now  sink 
ing  back  exhausted.  He  sat  once  more  through  a  night 
of  torment,  holding  her  hot  hands  in  his,  and  praying 
in  vain  for  the  coming  of  the  doctor. 

It  was  afternoon  of  the  next  day  before  the  man 
finally  came,  and  brought  some  relief  to  Thyrsis'  soul, 
and  perhaps  also  to  Corydon's  body.  He  took  her 
temperature  and  listened  to  her  breathing,  and  pro- 


THE    TREADMILL  493 

nounced  it  a  severe  attack  of  grippe,  with  a  touch  of 
bronchitis ;  and  he  laid  out  an  assortment  of  capsules 
and  liquids,  and  promised  to  come  again  if  Thyrsis  sent 
for  him. 

And  so  the  boy  set  out  in  the  double  role  of  trained 
nurse  and  mother's  assistant.  He  gave  Corydon  her 
medicines,  and  brought  fresh  water  for  her,  and 
smoothed  her  pillows  and  talked  to  her,  and  prepared 
some  delicacies  for  her  when  she  wished  to  eat ;  also  he 
dressed  and  bathed  the  baby,  and  cooked  his  complex 
meals  and  fed  them  to  him;  he  put  on  his  rubbers  and 
his  leggings  and  his  mittens,  and  the  overcoat  and 
peaked  hood  (which  Corydon  had  devised  for  him  out 
of  eighty  cents'  worth  of  woolly  red  cloth),  and  turned 
him  out  to  "bongie  cowtoos"  in  the  snow.  Likewise 
he  got  his  own  meals  and  washed  the  dishes,  and  tended 
the  fires  and  emptied  the  ashes  and  filled  the  lamps 
and  swept  the  floors ;  and  in  the  interim  between  these 
various  duties  he  fought  new  battles  within  himself,  and 
got  new  side-lights  upon  Chickamauga  and  "Bloody 
Angle". 

§  18.  IT  was  two  weeks  before  this  siege  was  lifted, 
and  Corydon  was  able  to  take  up  her  burdens  once 
more.  It  was  then  March,  and  the  snow  had  given 
place  to  cold  sleety  rains,  and  the  fields  and  the  ground 
about  their  home  were  miniature  swamps  full  of  mud. 
Thyrsis  would  tramp  through  this  to  the  hill-tops 
where  the  storm-winds  howled,  and  there  vow  defiance 
to  his  foes,  and  come  home  to  pour  new  hope  and 
courage  and  resolution  into  a  bottomless  pit. 

He  was  finishing  his  vision  of  the  field  of  Gettys 
burg — the  three-days'  grapple  between  two  titan  armies, 
that  meant  to  him  three  weeks  of  soul-terrifying  toil. 


494  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Men  had  said  that  Gettysburg  meant  the  turning  of 
the  tide,  that  victory  was  certain ;  and  yet  there  had 
followed  Sherman's  long  campaign,  and  all  the  horror 
of  the  Wilderness  fighting,  and  Mine  Run  and  Cold 
Harbor  and  the  ghastly  siege  of  Petersburg.  And  now 
Thyrsis  had  to  fight  his  way  through  this.  He  saw 
the  figure  that  he  had  dreamed,  and  that  possessed  him ; 
a  soldier  who  was  the  rage  of  the  War  incarnate,  the 
awakened  frenzy  of  the  nation.  He  was  a  man  lifted 
above  pain  and  cold  and  hunger;  he  was  gaunt  and 
wild  of  aspect,  restless  and  impatient,  driving,  driving 
to  the  end.  He  went  about  the  duties  of  the  camp  like 
one  in  a  dream ;  he  marched  like  an  automaton — for 
hours,  or  for  days,  as  need  might  be — his  thoughts 
flying  on  to  those  moments  that  alone  were  real  to  him, 
to  the  charge  and  the  fury  of  the  conflict,  the  blows 
that  were  the  only  things  that  counted.  He  lived  amid 
sights  and  sounds  of  horror,  with  groans  and  weeping 
in  his  ears,  with  a  mist  of  blood  and  cannon-smoke  be 
fore  his  eyes ;  he  drove  on,  grim  and  implacable,  the 
very  ground  about  him  rocking  and  quivering  in  a  de 
lirium  of  torment.  He  was  the  War! 

Meantime  Corydon  was  growing  paler,  and  more 
wretched  than  ever.  For  her,  too,  this  winter  was 
symbolized  as  a  battle-ground.  To  him  it  was  a  field 
in  which  armies  clashed,  and  the  issue  was  uncertain ; 
but  to  her  it  was  a  field  of  inevitable  defeat,  strewn 
with  the  corpses  of  her  hopes.  For  hours  she  would  lie 
upon  her  couch  in  the  night-watches,  silent,  alone,  star 
ing  out  of  the  window  at  the  wide  waste  of  snow  in  the 
pitiless  moonlight. 

Thyrsis  would  have  preferred  to  sleep  in  his  own 
study,  as  he  worked  so  late  at  night;  but  Corydon 


THE   TREADMILL  495 

begged  him  not  to  do  this,  she  would  rather  be  wakened, 
she  said. 

So,  on  one  occasion,  he  came  over  at  about  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  found  her  sleeping,  as  he  thought, 
and  crawled  into  his  own  cot.  He  was  just  dozing  off 
to  sleep,  when  he  heard  what  he  thought  was  a  stifled 
sob. 

He  listened;  he  thought  that  she  was  crying  in  her 
sleep.  But  then,  as  the  sound  grew  clearer,  he  sat  up. 
The  moonlight  was  shining  in  upon  her,  and  Thyrsis 
caught  a  bright  glint  of  steel.  Swift  as  a  flash  the 
meaning  of  that  swept  over  him.  He  had  provided  her 
with  a  revolver,  that  she  might  feel  safe  when  she  was 
left  alone;  and  now  he  bounded  out  of  bed  and  sprang 
across  the  room,  and  found  her  with  the  weapon  pointed 
at  her  head. 

He  struck  it  away ;  and  Corydon,  with  a  terrified  cry, 
clutched  at  him  and  collapsed  in  his  arms. 

"Oh  Thyrsis !"  she  wailed.    "Save  me !    Save  me !" 

"What  is  it?"  he  gasped. 

"I  couldn't  do  it !"  she  cried,  choking.  "I  couldn't ! 
I  tried — I  tried  so  hard !" 

"Sweetheart",  he  whispered,  in  terror. 

"Don't  let  me  do  it!"  she  sobbed.  "Oh,  Thyrsis, 
you  must  save  me!" 

He  pressed  her  to  his  bosom,  shuddering  with  dread, 
and  trying  to  soothe  her  hysterical  outburst.  So,  little 
by  little,  he  dragged  the  story  from  her.  For  three 
days  she  had  been  making  up  her  mind  to  shoot  her 
self,  and  she  had  chosen  that  night  for  the  time. 

"I've  been  sitting  here  for  an  hour,"  she  whispered 
— "with  the  revolver  in  my  hand.  And  I  couldn't  get 
up  the  courage  to  pull  the  trigger." 

He  clasped  her,  white  with  horror. 


496  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I  heard  you  coming,"  she  went  on.  "I  lay  down 
and  pretended  to  sleep.  Then  I  tried  again — but  I 
can't,  I  can't!  I'm  a  coward!" 

"Corydon!"  he  cried. 

"There  was  only  one  thing  that  stopped  me.  You 
would  have  got  on  without  me " 

"Don't  say  that,  dearest !" 

"You  would — I  know  it !  I'm  only  in  your  way.  But 
oh,  my  baby!  I  loved  him  so,  and  I  couldn't  bear  to 
leave  him!"  < 

She  clung  to  him  convulsively.  "Oh,  Thyrsis,"  she 
panted,  "think  what  it  meant  to  me  to  leave  him. 
He'd  have  been  without  a  mother  all  his  life !  And 
something  might  have  happened  to  you,  and  he'd  have 
had  no  one  to  love  him  at  all!" 

"Why  did  you  want  to  do  it?"  he  cried. 

"Oh  Thyrsis,  I've  suffered  so!  I'm  weary — I'm  worn 
out — I'm  sick  of  the  fight.  I  can't  stand  it  any  more 
— and  what  can  I  do?" 

"My  poor,  poor  girl,"  he  whispered,  and  pressed  her 
to  his  heart  in  a  paroxysm  of  grief.  "Oh,  my  Cory 
don !  My  Corydon!" 

The  horror  of  the  thing  overwhelmed  him ;  he  began 
to  weep  himself — his  frame  was  shaken  with  tearless, 
agonizing  sobs.  What  could  he  do  for  her,  how  could 
he  help  her? 

But  already  he  had  helped  her ;  it  was  not  often  that 
she  saw  him  weeping,  it  was  not  often  she  found  that 
she  could  do  something  for  him.  "Thyrsis,  do  you 
really  want  me?"  she  whispered.  "Do  you  truly  love 
me  that  much?" 

"I  love  you,  I  love  you !"  he  sobbed. 

And  she  replied,  "Then  I'll  stay.  I'll  bear  anything, 
if  you  need  me — if  I  can  be  of  any  use  at  all." 


THE    TREADMILL  497 

§  19.  So  their  tears  were  mingled;  so  once  more, 
being  sufficiently  plowed  up  with  agony,  they  might 
behold  the  deeps  of  each  other's  souls.  Being  at  their 
last  gasp,  and  driven  to  desperation,  they  would  make 
the  convulsive  effort,  and  break  the  crust  of  dullness 
and  commonplace,  and  reveal  again  the  mighty  forces 
hidden  in  their  depths.  At  such  hours  he  beheld  Cory- 
don  as  she  was,  the  flaming  spirit,  the  archangel 
prisoned  in  the  flesh.  If  only  he  could  have  found  the 
key  to  those  deep  chambers,  so  that  he  could  have  had 
access  to  them  always!  *v 

But  alas,  they  knew  only  one  path  that  led  to  them, 
and  that  through  the  valley  of  despair.  From  despair 
it  led  to  anguished  struggle,  and  from  struggle  to 
defiance,  to  rage  and  denunciation — and  thence  to 
visions  and  invocations,  raptures  and  enthralments.  So 
this  night,  for  instance,  behold  Corydon,  first  holding 
her  husband's  hands,  and  shuddering  with  awe,  and 
pledging  her  faith  all  over  again ;  and  then,  later  on, 
when  the  dawn  was  breaking,  sitting  in  the  cold  moon 
light  with  a  blanket  flung  about  her,  her  wild  hair  toss 
ing,  and  in  her  hand  the  revolver  with  which  she  had 
meant  to  destroy  herself.  Behold  her,  making  sport 
of  her  own  life-drama — turning  into  wildest  phantasy 
her  domestic  ignominies,  her  inhibitions  and  her  help 
mate's  blunderings ;  evoking  the  hosts  of  the  future  as 
to  a  festival,  rehearsing  the  tragedy  of  her  soul  with 
all  posterity  as  her  audience.  When  once  these  mad 
steeds  of  her  fancy  were  turned  loose,  one  could  never 
tell  where  their  course  would  be;  and  strange  indeed 
were  the  adventures  that  came  to  him  who  rode  with 
her! 

There  seemed  to  be  no  limit  to  the  powers  of  this 
subliminal  woman  within  Corydon.  Her  cheeks  would 


498  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

kindle,  her  eyes  would  blaze,  and  eloquence  would  pour 
from  her — the  language  of  great  poetry,  fervid  and 
passionate,  with  swift  flashes  of  insight  and  illumina 
tion,  tumultuous  invocations  and  bursts  of  prophecy. 
Thyrsis  would  listen  and  marvel.  What  a  mind  she  had 
— sharp,  like  a  rapier,  swift  as  the  lightning-flash! 
The  powers  of  penetration  and  understanding,  and 
above  all  the  sheer  splendors  of  language — the  blazes 
of  metaphor,  the  explosions  of  coruscating  wit !  What 
a  tragic  actress  she  might  have  made — how  she  would 
have  shaken  men's  souls,  and  set  them  to  shuddering 
with  terror !  What  an  opera-singer  she  could  have  been, 
with  that  rich  vibrant  voice,  and  the  mien  of  a  disin 
herited  goddess ! 

It  was  out  of  such  hours  that  the  faith  of  their 
lives  was  made ;  and  it  was  out  of  them  also  that  Thyrsis 
formed  his  idea  of  woman.  To  him  woman  was  an 
equal;  and  this  he  not  only  said  with  his  lips,  he  lived 
it  in  his  feelings.  The  time  came  when  he  went  out 
into  the  world,  and  learned  to  understand  the  world's 
idea,  that  woman  meant  vanity  and  pettiness  and 
frivolity;  but  Thyrsis  let  all  this  pass,  knowing  the 
woman-soul.  Somewhere  underneath,  not  yet  under 
stood  and  mastered,  was  pent  this  mighty  force  that 
in  the  end  would  revolutionize  all  human  ideas  and  insti 
tutions.  Here  was  faith,  here  was  vision,  here  was  the 
power  of  all  powers ;  and  how  was  it  to  be  delivered 
and  made  conscious,  and  brought  into  the  service  of 
life? 

Most  women  liked  Thyrsis,  because  they  divined  in 
some  vague  way  this  attitude ;  and  some  men  hated  him 
for  the  same  reason.  These  men,  Thyrsis  observed, 
were  the  slave-drivers;  they  held  that  woman  was  the 
weaker  vessel,  and  for  this  they  had  their  own  motives. 


THE   TREADMILL  499 

There  were  women,  too,  who  liked  to  be  ruled;  but 
Thyrsis  never  argued  with  them — it  was  enough,  he 
judged,  to  treat  any  slave  as  a  free  man,  or  any  servant 
as  a  gentleman,  and  sooner  or  later  they  would  divine 
what  he  meant,  and  the  spirit  of  revolt  would  begin  to 
flicker. 


BOOK  XIII 
THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE 


They  stood  upon  the  porch  of  the  little  cabm,  listen 
ing  to  the  silence  of  the  night. 

"How  far  away  it  all  seems!"  she  said — 

"How  many  a  dingle  on  the  loved  hill-side 

Hath  since  our  day  put  "by 
The  coronals  of  that  forgotten  time!19 

"It  makes  one  -feel  old"  he  said — "like  the  coming 
of  the  night !" 

"The  night!"  she  repeated,  and  went  on — 

"I  feel  her  finger  light 

Laid  pausefully  upon  life's  headlong  train; — 
The  foot  less  prompt  to  meet  the  morning  dew, 
The  heart  less  bounding  at  emotion  new, 
And  hope  once  crushed  less  quick  to  spring  agam!" 


§  1.  THROUGHOUT  this  long  winter  of  discontent 
came  to  them  one  ray  of  hope  from  the  outside  world. 
"The  Genius"  was  given  in  the  little  town  in  Germany, 
and  Thyrsis'  correspondent  sent  the  twenty-five  dollars, 
and  wrote  that  it  had  made  a  great  impression,  and 
that  more  performances  were  to  be  expected.  Then, 
after  an  interval,  Thyrsis  was  surprised  to  receive  from 
his  clipping-bureau  some  items  to  the  effect  that  his 
play  was  to  be  produced  in  one  of  the  leading  theatres 
in  Berlin.  He  wrote  to  his  correspondent  for  an  ex 
planation,  and  learned  to  his  dismay  that  his  play  had 
been  "pirated" ;  it  was,  of  course,  not  copyright  .in 
Germany,  and  so  he  had  no  redress,  and  must  content 
himself  with  what  his  friend  referred  to  as  "the  renowns 
which  will  be  brought  to  you  by  these  performances". 

The  play  came  out,  in  the  early  spring,  and  ap 
parently  made  a  considerable  sensation.  Thyrsis  read 
long  reviews  from  the  German  papers,  and  there  were 
accounts  of  it  in  several  American  papers.  So  people 
began  to  ask  who  this  unknown  poet  might  be.  The 
publishers  of  "The  Hearer  of  Truth"  were  moved  to 
venture  new  advertisements  of  the  book — whereby  they 
sold  perhaps  a  hundred  copies  more;  and  Thyrsis  was 
moved  to  pay  some  badly-needed  money  to  have  more 
copies  of  the  play  made,  so  that  he  might  try  to  interest 
some  other  manager.  He  carried  on  a  long  corre 
spondence  with  a  newly-organized  "stage  society",  which 
thought  a  great  deal  about  trying  the  play  at  a  matinee, 
but  did  nothing. 

503 


604  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Also,  Thyrsis  received  a  letter  from  one  of  the 
country's  popular  novelists,  who  had  heard  of  the  play 
abroad,  and  asked  to  read  it.  When  he  had  read  it, 
and  told  what  an  interesting  piece  of  work  it  was, 
Thyrsis  sat  down  and  wrote  the  great  man  about  his 
plight,  and  asked  for  help ;  which  led  to  correspondence, 
and  to  the  passing  round  of  the  manuscript  among  a 
group  of  literary  people.  One  of  these  was  Haddon 
Channing,  the  critic  and  essayist,  who  was  interested 
enough  to  write  Thyrsis  several  long  letters,  and  to 
read  the  rest  of  his  productions,  and  later  on  to  call 
to  see  him.  Which,  visit  proved  a  curious  experience  for 
the  family. 

He  arrived  one  day  towards  spring,  when  it  chanced 
that  Corydon  was  in  town  visiting  the  dentist.  Thyrsis 
had  just  finished  his  dinner  when  he  saw  two  people 
coming  through  the  orchard,  and  he  leaped  up  in  haste 
to  put  the  soiled  dishes  away,  and  make  the  place  as 
presentable  as  possible.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Channing  had 
come  in  their  car  (they  lived  in  Philadelphia) ,  and  were 
followed  by  an  escort  of  the  farmer's  children — since 
an  automobile  was  a  rare  phenomenon  in  that  neigh 
borhood.  The  entrance  to  the  peach-orchard  proved 
not  wide  enough  for  the  machine,  so  they  had  to  get 
out  and  walk;  and  this  they  found  annoying,  because 
the  ground  was  wet  and  soft.  All  of  which  seemed  to 
emphasize  the  incongruity  of  their  presence. 

Haddon  Channing  might  have  been  described  as  a 
dilettante  radical.  He  employed  a  highly-wrought  and 
artificial  style,  which  scintillated  with  brilliant  epigram ; 
one  had  a  feeling  that  it  rather  atoned  for  the  evils 
in  human  life,  that  they  became  the  occasion  of  so 
much  cleverness  in  Channing's  books.  Perhaps  that  was 
the  reason  why  most  people  did  not  object  to  the  vague- 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE        605 

Tiess  of  his  ideas,  when  it  came  to  any  constructive 
suggestion.  In  fact  he  rather  made  a  point  of  such 
vagueness — when  you  tried  to  do  anything  about  a  so 
cial  evil,  that  was  politics,  and  politics  were  vulgar. 
One  could  never  pin  Channing  down,  but  his  idea  seemed 
to  be  that  in  the  end  all  men  would  become  free  and 
independent  spirits,  able  to  make  their  own  epigrams ; 
after  which  there  would  be  no  more  evil  in  the  world. 

And  here  he  was  in  the  flesh.  It  seemed  to  Thyrsis 
as  if  he  must  have  made  a  study  of  his  own  books,  and 
then  proceeded  to  fit  his  person  and  his  clothing,  his 
accent  and  his  manner,  to  make  a  proper  setting  thereto. 
He  was  tall  and  lean,  immaculate  and  refined ;  he  spoke 
with  airy  and  fastidious  grace,  pouring  out  one  con 
tinuous  stream  of  cleverness — any  hour  of  his  conver 
sation  was  equivalent  to  a  volume  of  his  works  at  a 
dollar  and  a  quarter  net. 

Also,  there  was  Mrs.  Channing,  gracious  and  ex 
quisite,  looking  as  if  she  had  stepped  out  of  one  of 
Rossetti's  poems.  She  was  a  poetess  herself;  writing 
about  Acteon,  and  Antinoiis,  and  other  remote  sub 
jects.  Thyrsis  assumed  that  there  must  be  something 
in  these  poems,  for  they  were  given  two  or  three  pages 
in  the  thirty-five-cent  magazines;  but  he  himself  had 
never  discovered  any  reason  why  he  should  read  one 
through. 

§  2.  THEY  seated  themselves  upon  his  six-foot 
piazza;  and  Thyrsis,  who  had  very  little  sense  of  per 
sonality,  and  was  altogether  wrapped  up  in  ideas,  was 
soon  in  the  midst  of  a  free  and  easy  discussion  with 
them.  It  seemed  ages  since  he  had  had  an  opportunity 
to  exchange  opinions  with  anyone  except  Corydon. 
With  these  people  he  roamed  over  the  fields  of  litera- 


506  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ture ;  and  as  they  found  nothing  to  agree  about  any 
where,  the  conversation  did  not  flag. 

A  strange  experience  it  must  have  been  to  them,  to 
come  to  a  lonelv  shanty  in  the  woods,  and  encounter 
a  haggard  boy  in  a  cotton-shirt  and  a  pair  of  frayed 
trousers,  who  was  all  oblivious  of  their  elegance,  and 
unawed  by  their  reputation,  and  who  behaved  like  a 
bull  in  the  china-shop  of  their  orderly  opinions.  Mrs. 
Channing,  it  seemed,  was  completing  her  life-work,  a 
volume  which  was  to  revolutionize  current  criticism, 
and  lead  the  world  back  to  artistic  health ;  to  her, 
modern  civilization  was  a  vast  abortion,  and  in  Greek 
culture  was  to  be  sought  the  fountain-head  of  health. 
She  sang  the  praises  of  Athenian  literature  and  art 
and  life ;  there  was  sanity  and  clarity,  there  was  balance 
and  serenity!  And  to  compare  it  with  the  jangled 
confusion  and  the  frantic  strife  of  modern  times ! 

To  which  Thyrsis  answered,  "We'd  best  let  modern 
times  alone.  For  here  you've  all  facts  and  no  generali 
zation  ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  Greeks  you've  all  gener 
alization  and  no  facts." 

And  so  they  went  at  it,  hot  and  heavy.  Mrs.  Chan 
ning,  her  Greek  serenity  somewhat  ruffled,  insisted  that 
she  had  studied  the  facts  for  herself.  The  other  pro 
ceeded  to  probe  into  her  equipment,  and  found  that 
she  knew  Homer  and  Sophocles,  but  did  not  know  Aris 
tophanes  so  well,  and  did  not  know  the  Greek  epigrams 
at  all.  Thyrsis  maintained  that  the  dominant  note  in 
the  Greek  heritage  was  one  of  bewilderment  and  despair  ; 
in  support  of  which  alarming  opinion  he  carried  the 
discussion  from  the  dreams  of  Greek  literature  to  the 
realities  of  Greek  life.  Did  Mrs.  Channing  know  how 
the  Greeks  had  persecuted  all  their  great  thinkers? 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE   SNARE        507 

Did  she  know  anything  about  the  cruelties  of  their 
slave-code  ? 

"Have  you  ever  studied  Greek  politics?"  he  asked. 
"Do  you  realize,  for  instance,  that  it  was  the  custom 
of  statesmen  and  generals  who  were  defeated  by  their 
political  rivals,  to  go  over  to  the  enemy  and  lead  an 
expedition  against  their  homes?" 

"Isn't  that  putting  it  rather  strongly?"  asked  Mrs. 
Channing. 

"I  don't  think  so,"  he  answered.  "Didn't  the  con 
querors  of  both  Salamis  and  Platsea  afterwards  sell 
out  to  the  Persian  king?  And  then  you  talk  about  the 
noble  ideal  of  woman  which  the  Greeks  developed !  Don't 
you  know  that  it  was  nothing  but  a  literary  tradition  ?" 

"I  had  never  understood  that,"  said  Mrs.  Channing. 

To  which  the  other  answered:  "It  was  handed  down 
from  imaginary  Homeric  days.  The  Greek  lady  of 
the  Periclean  age  was  a  domestic  prisoner  and  drudge." 

§  3.  THEN,  late  in  the  afternoon,  came  Corydon ; 
and  this  part  of  the  adventure  must  have  seemed 
stranger  yet  to  the  Channings.  Corydon  wore  a  shirt 
waist  and  a  ten-cent  straw  hat,  trimmed  with  some  white 
mosquito-netting,  and  an  old  blue  skirt  which  she  had 
worn  before  her  marriage,  and  had  enlarged  little  by 
little  during  the  period  of  her  pregnancy,  and  had  taken 
in  again  after  the  baby  was  born.  Also  she  was  pale 
and  sad-looking,  much  startled  by  the  sight  of  the 
automobile,  and  the  sudden  apparition  of  elegance. 
She  got  rid  of  her  armfuls  of  groceries  and  bundles, 
and  seated  herself  in  an  inconspicuous  place,  and  sat 
listening  while  the  argument  went  on.  For  a  full 
hour  she  never  uttered  a  word;  only  once  during  the 
controversy  over  the  "Greek  lady",  Mrs.  Channing 


508  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

turned  to  her  and  asked,  "Don't  you  agree  with  me?" 
But  Corydon  could  only  answer,  "I  don't  know,  I 
have  not  read  much  history."  And  who  was  there  to  tell 
the  visitor  that  this  strange,  wide-eyed  girl  knew  more 
about  the  tragedies  and  terrors  of  the  Greek  tempera 
ment  than  she  with  all  her  culture  and  her  college-de 
grees  could  have  learned  in  many  life- times? 

The  two  stayed  to  supper,  and  Corydon  and  Thyrsis 
set  out  the  meal  upon  the  rustic  outdoor  table;  they 
apologized  for  their  domestic  inadequacies,  but  Mrs. 
Channing  declared  that  she  "adored  picknicking".  The 
evening  was  spent  in  more  discussion;  and  finally  it 
was  decided  that  the  visitors  should  stay  over  night  at 
the  hotel  in  town,  and  come  out  again  in  the  morning. 

Thyrsis  concluded,  as  he  thought  the  matter  over, 
that  the  two  must  have  been  fascinated  by  this  domestic 
situation,  and  curious  to  look  deeper  into  it.  Per 
haps  they  saw  "material"  in  it ;  or  perhaps  it  was  that 
Haddon  Channing  was  really  impressed  by  Thyrsis' 
powers,  and  sought  to  understand  his  problems  and 
help  him.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  motive  for  it, 
when  they  came  the  next  morning,  the  critic  took 
Thyrsis  for  a  walk  in  the  woods  and  proceeded  to  dis 
cuss  his  affairs.  And  meanwhile  his  wife  had  set  her 
self  to  the  task  of  probing  the  innermost  corners  of 
Corydon's  soul. 

The  burden  of  Channing's  discourse  was  Thyrsis' 
impatience  and  lack  of  balance,  his  fanaticism  and  his 
too  great  opinion  of  his  own  work.  "My  dear  fellow," 
he  said,  "you  are  the  most  friendless  human  being  I 
have  ever  encountered  upon  earth.  How  can  you  expect 
to  interest  men  if  you  don't  get  out  into  the  world  and 
learn  what  they  are  doing?" 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        509 

"That  means  to  get  a  position,  I  suppose?"  said 
Thyrsis. 

"No,  not  necessarily "  began  the  other. 

"But  I  haven't  money  to  live  in  the  city  otherwise." 

That  was  too  definite  for  Channing,  and  he  went  off 
on  another  tack.  He  had  been  reading  "The  Higher 
Cannibalism",  and  he  could  not  forgive  it.  A  boy  of 
Thyrsis5  age  had  no  right  to  be  seething  with  such 
bitterness ;  there  must  be  some  fundamental  and  terrible 
cause.  He  was  destroying  himself,  he  was  eating  out 
his  heart  in  this  isolation ;  he  was  so  wrapped  up  in  his 
own  miseries,  his  own  wrongs — in  all  the  concerns  of 
his  own  exaggerated  ego !' 

They  were  seated  beside  a  little  streamlet  in  the  woods. 
"What  you  need  is  something  to  get  you  out  of  your 
self,"  the  critic  was  saying — "something  to  restore 
your  sanity  and  balance.  It'll  come  to  you  some  day. 
Perhaps  it'll  be  a  love-affair — you'll  meet  some  woman 
who'll  carry  you  away.  I  know  the  sort  you  need — 
they  grow  in  the  West — the  great  brooding  type  of 
woman-soul,  that  would  fold  you  in  her  arms  and  give 
you  a  little  peace." 

Thyrsis  was  silent  for  a  space.  "You  forget,"  he 
said,  in  a  low  voice,  "that  I  am  already  married." 

The  other  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Such  things 
have  happened,  even  so,"  he  said. 

Thyrsis  had  taken  his  part  in  the  conversation  be 
fore  this,  defending  himself  and  setting  forth  his  point 
of  view.  But  now  he  fell  silent.  The  words  had  cut 
him  to  the  quick.  It  seemed  to  him  an  insult  and  a 
bitter  humiliation ;  here,  at  his  home,  almost  in  the 
presence  of  his  wife !  What  was  the  man's  idea,  anyway  ? 

And  suddenly  he  turned  upon  Channing  with  the 
question,  ".You  think  that  I've  married  a  doll?" 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

The  other  was  staggered  for  a  moment.  "I  don't 
know  what  you've  married,"  he  replied. 

"No,"  said  Thyrsis.  "Then  how  can  you  advise  me 
in  such  a  matter?" 

"I  see  that  you're  not  happy "  the  other  began. 

"Yes,"  said  the  boy.  "But  I  don't  want  any  more 
women." 

There  was  a  pause,  while  Thyrsis  sat  pondering, 
Should  he  try  to  explain  to  this  man?  But  he  shook 
his  head.  No,  it  would  be  useless  to  try.  "She  is  not 
in  your  class,"  he  said. 

"How  do  you  mean?"  asked  the  other. 

"She  has  none  of  your  culture,  none  of  your  social 
graces.  She  can't  write,  and  she  can't  sing — she  can't 
do  anything  that  your  wife  does." 

"I'm  afraid,"  said  Channing,  in  a  low  voice,  "you 
don't  take  my  remarks  in  the  right  spirit." 

"Even  suppose  that  she  were  not  what  you  call  a 
'great  woman-soul',"  persisted  Thyrsis — "at  least  she 
has  starved  and  suffered  for  me;  and  wouldn't  common 
loyalty  bind  me  to  her?" 

"I  have  tried  to  do  something  very  difficult,"  said  the 
other,  after  a  silence.  "I  have  tried  to  talk  to  you 
frankly.  It  is  t>>"  most  thankless  task  in  the  world  to 
tell  a  man  his  own  faults." 

"I  know,"  said  Thyrsis.  "And  that's  all  right— I'm 
perfectly  willing.  I  don't  mind  knowing  my  faults." 

"It  is  evident  that  you  have  resented  it,"  declared  the 
other. 

Thyrsis  answered  with  a  laugh,  "Don't  you  admit  of 
replies  to  your  criticisms?  Suppose  I'm  pointing  out 
some  of  your  faults — your  faults  as  a  critic?" 

Channing  said  that  he  did  not  object  to  that. 

"Very  well,  then,"  said  Thyrsis.     "I  simply  tell  you 


THE   MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        511 

that  you  have  missed  the  point  of  my  trouble.  There's 
nothing  the  matter  with  me  but  poverty  and  lack  of  op 
portunity  ;  and  there's  nothing  else  the  matter  with  my 
wife.  We're  doing  our  best,  and  it's  the  simple  fact 
that  we've  endured  and  dared  more  than  anybody  we've 
ever  met.  And  that's  all  there  is  to  it." 

It  was  evident  that  Channing  was  deeply  hurt.  He 
turned  the  conversation  to  other  matters,  and  pretty 
soon  they  got  up  and  strolled  on.  When  they  came 
near  to  the  house,  he  went  off  to  see  his  chauffeur,  and 
Thyrsis  stood  watching  him,  and  pondering  over  the 
episode. 

It  was  the  same  thing  that  had  happened  to  him  in 
the  city;  it  was  the  thing  that  would  be  happening  to 
him  all  the  time.  He  saw  that  however  wretched  he 
might  be  with  Corydon,  he  would  always  take  her  part 
against  the  world.  Whatever  her  faults  might  be,  they 
were  not  such  as  the  world  could  judge.  Rather  would 
he  make  it  the  test  of  a  person's  character,  that  they 
should  understand  and  appreciate  her,  in  spite  of  her 
lack  of  that  superficial  thing  called  culture — the  ability 
to  rattle  off  opinions  about  any  subject  under  the  sun. 

So  it  was  that  loyalty  to  Corydon  held  him  fast. 
So  her  temperament  was  his  law,  and  her  needs  were  his 
standards ;  and  day  by  day  he  must  become  more  like 
her,  and  less  like  himself! 

§  4.  HE  returned  to  the  house,  entering  by  the  rear 
door.  The  baby  was  lying  in  the  room  asleep,  and  out 
upon  the  piazza  he  could  hear  Corydon  and  Mrs.  Chan 
ning.  Corydon  was  speaking,  in  her  intense  voice. 

"The  trouble  with  me,"  she  was  saying,  "is  that  I 
have  no  confidence!  Other  women  are  sure  of  them 
selves — they  are  self-contained,  serene,  satisfied." 


512  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"But  why  shouldn't  you  be  that  way?"  Thus  Mrs. 
Charming. 

"I  aim  too  high,"  said  Corydon.  "I  want  too  much. 
I  defeat  myself." 

"Yes,"  said  the  other,  "but  why " 

"It's  been  the  circumstances  of  all  my  life !  I've  been 
defeated — thwarted — repressed  !  Everything  drives  me 
back  into  myself.  There  is  nothing  I  can  do — I  can 
only  endure  and  suffer  and  wait.  So  all  the  influences 
in  my  life  are  negative — 

*I  was  sick  with  the  Nay  of  life — 
With   my.  lonely   soul's    refrain!'" 

"What  is  that  you  are  quoting?"  asked  Mrs.  Chan- 
ning. 

"It's  from  a  poem  I  wrote,"  said  Corydon. 

"Oh,  you  write  poetry?" 

"I  couldn't  say  that,"  was  the  reply.  "I  have  no 
technique — I  never  studied  anything  about  it." 

"But  you  try  sometimes?" 

"I  find  it  helps  me,"  said  Corydon — "once  in  a  great 
while  I  find  lines  in  my  mind;  and  I  put  them  together, 
so  that  I  can  say  them  over,  and  remind  myself  of 
things." 

"I  see,"  said  Mrs.  Channing.  "Tell  me  the  poem  you 
quoted." 

"I — I  don't  believe  you'd  think  much  of  it,"  said 
Corydon,  hesitating.  "I  never  expected  anybody " 

"I'd  be  interested  to  hear  it,"  declared  her  visitor. 

So  Corydon  recited  in  a  low  voice  a  couple  of  stanzas 
which  had  come  to  her  in  the  lonely  midnight  hours. 
Thyrsis  listened  with  interest — he  had  never  heard  them 
before : 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE        513 

"What  matters  the  tired  heart, 

What  matters  the  weary  brain? 
What  matters  the  cruel  smart 
Of  the  burden  borne  again? 

I  was  sick  with  the  Nay  of  life — 
With  my  lonely  soul's  refrain; 

But  the  essence  of  love  is  strife, 
And  the  meaning  of  life  is  pain." 

There  was  a  pause.  "Do  you — do  you  think  that  is 
worth  while  at  all?"  asked  Corydon. 

"It  is  evidently  sincere,"  replied  Mrs.  Channing.  "I 
think  you  ought  to  study  and  practice." 

"I  can't  make  much  effort  at  it " 

But  the  other  went  on :  "What  concerns  me  is  the 
attitude  to  life  it  shows.  It  is  terrible  that  a  young 
girl  should  feel  that  way.  You  must  not  let  yourself 
get  into  such  a  state !" 

"But  how  can  I  help  it?" 

"You  must  have  something  that  occupies  your  mind ! 
That  is  what  you  need,  truly  it  is !  You've  got  to  stop 
thinking  about  yourself — you've  got  to  get  outside 
yourself,  somehow!" 

Thyrsis  caught  his  breath.  He  could  tell  from  the 
tone  of  the  speaker's  voice  that  she  was  laboring  with 
Corydon,  putting  forth  all  her  energies  to  impress  her. 
He  was  tempted  to  step  forward  and  cry  out,  "No,  no ! 
That's  not  the  way  !  That  won't  work !" 

But  instead,  he  stood  rooted  to  the  spot,  while  Mrs. 
Channing  went  on —  "This  unhappiness  comes,  from  the 
fact  that  you  are  so  self-centred.  You  must  get  some 
constructive  work,  my  dear,  if  it's  only  training  your 
baby.  You  must  realize  that  you  are  not  the  only 


514  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

person  who  has  troubles  in  the  world.  Why,  I  know 
a  poor  washerwoman,  who  was  left  a  widow  with  four 
children  to  care  for " 

And  then  suddenly  Thyrsis  heard  a  voice  cry  out 
in  anguish,  "Oh,  oh!  stop!"  He  heard  his  wife  spring 
up  from  her  chair. 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  Mrs.  Channing. 

"I  can't  listen  to  you  any  more!"  cried  Corydon. 
"You  don't  know  what  you're  saying! — You  don't  un 
derstand  me  at  all!" 

There  was  a  pause.  "I'm  sorry  you  feel  that,"  said 
Mrs.  Channing. 

"I  had  no  right  to  talk  to  you !"  exclaimed  the  other. 
"There's  no  one  can  understand !  I  have  to  fight 
alone!" 

At  this  point  Thyrsis  went  into  the  kitchen,  and  made 
some  noise  that  they  would  hear.  Then  he  called,  "Are 
you  there,  dearest?" 

"Yes,"  said  Corydon;  and  he  went  out  upon  the 
piazza.  He  saw  her  standing,  white  and  tense. 

"Are  you  still  talking?"  he  said,  with  forced  care 
lessness. 

And  as  Mrs.  Channing  answered  "Yes,"  Corydon 
said,  quickly,  "Excuse  me  a  moment,"  and  went  into 
the  house. 

So  the  poet  sat  and  talked  with  his  guest  about  the 
state  of  the  weather  and  the  condition  of  the  roads; 
until  at  last  her  husband  arrived,  saying  that  it  was 
time  they  were  starting.  Corydon  did  not  appear 
again,  and  so  finally  Thyrsis  accompanied  them  out  to 
their  car,  and  saw  them  start  off.  They  promised  to 
come  again,  but  he  knew  they  would  not  keep  that 
promise. 


THE   MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        515 

§  5.  HE  went  back  to  the  house,  and  after  some 
search  he  found  Corydon  down  in  the  woods,  whither 
she  had  fled  to  have  out  her  agony. 

"Has  that  woman  gone?"  she  panted,  when  he  came 
near. 

"Yes,  dear,"  he  said.     "She's  gone." 

"Oh !"  cried  Corydon.  "How  dared  she !  How  dared 
she!" 

"Get  up,  sweetheart,"  said  Thyrsis.  "The  ground  is 
wet." 

"She's  gone  off  in  her  automobile !"  exclaimed  the 
girl,  passionately.  "She  spent  last  night  at  a  hotel 
that  charged  twelve  dollars  a  day,  and  then  she  told 
me  about  her  washerwoman !  Now  she's  gone  back  to 
her  beautiful  home,  with  servants  and  a  governess  and 
a  piano  and  everything  else  she  wants !  And  she  talked 
to  me  about  'occupation' !  What  right  had  she  to  come 
here  and  trample  on  my  face?" 

"But  why  did  you  let  her,  dearest?" 

"How  could  I  help  myself?     I  had  no  idea " 

"But  how  did  you  get  started?" 

"I've  nobody  to  confide  in — nobody !"  cried  Corydon. 
"And  she  wanted  to  know  about  me — she  led  me  on. 
I  thought  she  sympathized  with  me — I  thought  she 
understood !" 

"She's  a  woman  of  the  world,  my  dear." 

"She  was  just  pulling  me  to  pieces !  She  wanted  to 
see  how  I  worked !  Don't  you  see  what  she  was  looking 
for,  Thyrsis — she  thought  I  was  material!" 

"She  only  writes  about  the  Greeks,"  said  Thyrsis, 
with  a  smile. 

"I'm  a  horrible  example !  I'm  neurasthenic  and  self- 
centred — I'm  the  modern  woman!  She  read  me  a  long 
lecture  like  that !  I  ought  to  get  busy  !" 


516  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Dearest!"  he  pleaded,  trying  to  soothe  her. 

"Busy" !  repeated  Corydon,  laughing  hysterically. 
"Busy!  I  wash  and  dress  and  amuse  a  baby!  I  get 
six  meals  a  day  for  him,  I  get  three  meals  for  us,  and 
clean  up  everything.  And  the  rest  of  the  day  I'm  so 
exhausted  I  can  hardly  stand  up,  and  a  good  part  of 
the  time  I'm  sick  besides.  And  then,  if  I  think  about 
my  troubles,  it's  because  I've  nothing  to  do!" 

"My  dear,"  Thyrsis  replied,  "you  should  not  have 
put  yourself  at  her  mercy." 

"How  I  hate  her!"  cried  Corydon.  "How  I  hate 
her!" 

"You  must  learn  to  protect  yourself  from  such  peo 
ple,  Corydon." 

"I  won't  meet  them  at  all!  I'm  not  able  to  face  them 
—I've  none  of  their  weapons,  none  of  their  training. 
I  don't  want  to  know  about  them,  or  their  kind  of  life ! 
They  have  no  souls!" 

"It  isn't  easy  for  them  to  understand,"  said  Thyrsis. 
"They  have  never  been  poor— 

"That  woman  talks  about  the  Greek  love  of  beauty ! 
What  sacrifice  has  she  ever  made  for  beauty — what 
agony  has  she  ever  dared  for  it?  And  yet  she  can 
prattle  about  it — the  phrases  roll  from  her !  She's 
been  educated — polished — finished  !  She's  been  taught 
just  what  to  say!  And  I  haven't  been  taught,  and  so 
she  despises  me!" 

"It's  deeper  than  that,  my  dear,"  he  said.  "You 
have  something  in  you  that  she  would  hate  instinctively." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"I've  told  you  before,  dearest.     It's  genius,  I  think." 

"Genius  !  But  what  use  is  it  to  me,  if  it  is  ?  It  only 
unfits  me  for  life.  It  eats  me  up,  it  destroys  me!" 

"Some  day,"  he  said,  "vou  will  find  a  way  to  express 


THE   MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        517 

it.  It  will  come,  never  fear. — But  now,  dear,  be  sensi 
ble.  The  ground  is  wet,  and  if  you  sit  there,  you  will 
surely  be  laid  up  with  rheumatism." 

He  lifted  her  up;  but  she  was  not  to  be  diverted. 
Suddenly  she  turned,  and  caught  him  by  the  arms. 
"Thyrsis !"  she  cried.  "Tell  me !  Do  you  blame  me 
as  she  does?  Do  you  think  I'm  weak  and  incompetent?" 

Whatever  answer  he  might  have  been  inclined  to  make, 
he  saw  in  her  wild  eyes  that  only  one  answer  was  to  be 
thought  of.  "Certainly  not,  my  dear  !"  he  said,  quickly. 
"How  could  you  ask  me  such  a  question?" 

"Oh,  tell  me !  tell  me !"  she  exclaimed.  And  so  he  had 
to  go  on,  and  sing  the  song  of  their  love  to  her,  and 
pour  out  balm  upon  her  wounded  spirit. 

But  afterwards  he  went  alone ;  and  then  it  was  not 
so  simple.  Little  demons  of  doubt  came  and  tormented 
him.  Might  it  not  be  that  there  was  something  in  the 
point  of  view  of  the  Channings?  He  took  Corydon  at 
her  own  estimate — at  the  face  value  of  her  emotions ; 
but  might  it  not  be  that  he  was  deluding  himself,  that 
he  was  a  victim  of  his  own  infatuation? 

He  would  ponder  this ;  he  tried  to  have  it  out  with 
himself  for  once.  What  did  he  really  think  about  it? 
What  would  he  have  told  Corydon  if  he  had  told  her 
the  bald  truth?  But  such  doubts  could  not  stay  with 
him  for  long.  They  brought  shame  to  him.  He  was 
like  a  man  travelling  across  the  plains,  who  comes  upon 
the  woman  he  loves,  being  tortured  by  a  band  of 
Apaches ;  and  who  is  caught  and  bound  fast,  to  watch 
the  proceedings.  Would  such  a  man  spend  his  time  ask 
ing  whether  the  woman  was  weak  and  incompetent? 
No- — his  energies  would  be  given  to  getting  his  arms 
loose,  and  finding  out  where  the  guns  were.  He  would 
set  her  free,  and  give  her  a  chance;  and  then  it  would 


518  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

be  time  enough  to  measure  her  powers  and  pass  judg 
ment  upon  her. 

§  6.  IT  was  a  long  time  before  the  family  got  over 
that  visitation.  Corydon  burned  all  Channing's  books, 
and  she  wrote  a  long  and  indignant  letter  to  Mrs.  Chan- 
ning,  and  then  burned  the  letter.  Thyrsis  never  told 
her  about  his  conversation  with  the  husband,  for  he 
knew  she  would  never  get  over  that  insult.  For  himself, 
he  concluded  that  the  Channings  were  lucky  in  having 
got  into  a  quarrel  with  them,  as  otherwise  he  would 
surely  have  compelled  them  to  lend  him  some  money. 

In  truth,  the  advent  of  some  fairy-godmother  or 
Lady  Bountiful  was  badly  needed  just  then.  They  had 
struggled  desperately  to  keep  within  the  thirty-dollar 
limit,  but  it  could  no  longer  be  done.  Illnesses  were 
expensive  luxuries ;  and  there  was  the  typwriting  of  the 
book — some  twenty  dollars  so  far  ;  also,  there  were  many 
things  that  happened  when  one  was  running  a  house 
hold — -a  tooth-ache,  or  a  telegram,  or  a  hot-water  bottle 
that  got  a  hole  in  it,  or  a  horse  that  ran  away  and 
broke  a  shaft.  Little  by  little  the  bills  they  had  been 
obliged  to  run  up  at  the  grocer's  and  the  butcher's 
and  the  doctor's  had  been  getting  beyond  the  limits 
of  their  monthly  check;  and  to  cap  the  climax,  there 
came  a  letter  from  Henry  Darrell,  saying  that  the  next 
two  checks  would  be  the  last  he  could  possibly  send. 

So  Thyrsis  set  to  work  once  more  at  the  shell  of  that 
tough  old  oyster,  the  world.  He  made  out  a  "scenario" 
of  the  rest  of  his  new  book,  and  sent  it  with  the  part 
he  had  already  done  to  his  friend  Mr.  Ardsley.  Then 
for  three  weeks  he  waited  in  dread  suspense ;  until  at 
last  came  a  letter  asking  him  to  call  and  talk  over  his 
proposition. 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE       .519 

Mr.  Ardsley  had  been  reading  all  Thyrsis'  manu 
scripts,  nor  had  he  failed  to  note  the  triumph  of  "The 
Genius"  abroad.  It  became  at  once  apparent  to  Thyrsis 
that  the  new  book  had  scored  with  him;  it  was  a  book 
that  could  hardly  fail,  he  said — if  only  it  were  finished 
as  it  had  been  begun.  Thyrsis  made  it  clear  that  he 
intended  to  finish  it;  no  man  could  gaze  into  his  wild 
eyes,  and  hear  him  talk  of  it  in  breathless  excitement, 
without  realizing  that  he  would  die,  if  need  be,  rather 
than  fail. 

So  then  the  author  went  in  to  have  a  talk  with  the 
head  of  the  firm.  He  spread  out  the  treasures  of  his 
soul  before  this  merchant,  and  the  merchant  sat  and 
appraised  them  with  a  cold  and  critical  eye.  But  Thyr 
sis,  too,  had  learned  something  about  trade  by  this  time, 
and  was  watching  the  merchant ;  he  made  a  desperate 
effort  and  summoned  up  the  courage  to  state  his  de 
mands — he  wanted  five  hundred  dollars  advance,  in  in 
stallments,  and  he  wanted  fifteen  per  cent,  royalty  upon 
the  book.  To  his  wonder  and  amazement  the  merchant 
never  turned  a  hair  at  this;  and  before  they  parted 
company,  the  incredible  bargain  had  been  made,  and 
waited  only  the  signing  of  the  contracts! 

Thyrsis  went  out  from  the  building  like  a  blind  man 
who  had  suddenly  received  his  sight.  It  seemed  to  him 
at  that  moment  as  if  the  last  problem  of  his  life  had 
been  solved.  He  sent  off  a  telegram  to  Corydon  to  tell 
her  of  the  victory,  and  a  letter  to  Darrell,  saying  that 
he  need  send  no  more  money — that  the  path  was  clear 
before  his  feet  at  last ! 

§  7.  THIS  marked  a  new  stage  in  the  family's  finan 
cial  progress ;  and  as  usual  it  was  signalized  by  a  grand 
debauch  in  bill-paying*  Alst>  there  was  a  real  table- 


520  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

cover  for  Corydon,  and  a  vase  in  which  she  might  put 
spring-flowers;  there  were  new  dresses  for  the  baby, 
and  more  important  yet,  a  new  addition  to  the  house. 
This  was  to  be  a  sort  of  lean-to  at  the  rear,  sixteen 
feet  wide  and  eight  feet  deep,  and  divided  into  two 
apartments,  one  of  which  was  to  be  the  kitchen,  and  the 
other  an  extra  bed-room.  For  they  were  going  to  keep 
a  servant! 

This  was  a  new  decision,  to  which  they  had  come 
after  much  hesitation  and  discussion.  It  would  be  a 
frightful  expense — including  the  cost  of  the  extra  food 
it  would  add  over  thirty  dollars  a  month  to  their  ex 
penses  ;  but  it  was  the  only  way  they  could  see  the 
least  hope  of  freedom,  of  any  respite  from  household 
drudgery.  It  had  been  just  a  year  now  since  they 
had  set  out  upon  their  adventure  in  domesticity;  and 
in  that  time  Corydon  figured  that  she  had  prepared 
two  thousand  meals  for  the  baby.  She  had  fed  each 
one  of  them,  spoonful  by  spoonful,  into  his  mouth ;  and 
also  she  had  washed  two  thousand  spoons  and  dishes, 
and  brushed  off  two  thousand  tables,  and  swept  two 
thousand  floors.  And  with  every  day  of  such  drudgery 
the  heights  of  music  and  literature  seemed  farther  away 
and  more  unattainable. 

Thyrsis  had  seen  something  of  servants  in  earlier 
days — he  had  memories  of  strange  figures  that  during 
intervals  of  prosperity  had  flitted  through  his  mother's 
home.  There  had  been  the  frail,  anaemic  Swedish 
woman,  who  lived  on  tea  and  sugar,  and  afterwards  had 
gone  away  and  borne  nine  children,  more  frail  and 
anaemic  than  herself;  there  had  been  the  stout  per 
sonage  with  the  Irish  brogue  who  had  dropped  the 
Christmas  turkey  out  of  the  window  and  had  not  taken 
the  trouble  to  go  down  after  it ;  there  had  been  the  little 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        521 

old  negress  who  had  gone  insane,  and  hurled  the  salt- 
box  at  his  mother's  head.  But  Thyrsis  was  hoping  that 
they  might  avoid  such  troubles  themselves ;  he  had  an 
idea  that  by  watching  at  Castle  Garden  they  might  lay 
hold  upon  some  young  peasant-girl  from  Germany,  who 
would  be  untouched  by  any  of  the  corruptions  of  civi 
lization.  "A  sort  of  Dorothea",  he  suggested  to  Cory- 
don  ;  and  they  agreed  that  they  would  search  diligently 
and  find  such  a  "treffliches  Mtidchen",  who  would  be 
trusting  and  affectionate,  and  would  talk  in  German 
with  the  baby. 

So  now  he  spent  several  days  hunting  in  strange 
places ;  and  at  last,  in  a  dingy  East-side  employment- 
office,  he  came  upon  his  Schatz.  She  was  buxom  and 
hearty,  and  fairly  oozed  good-nature  at  every  pore; 
she  had  only  been  a  week  in  the  country,  and  was  evi 
dently  nai've  enough  for  any  purpose  whatever.  She 
had  no  golden  hair  like  Dorothea,  but  was  swarthy — 
her  German  was  complicated  with  a  Hungarian  accent, 
and  with  strange  words  that  one  had  not  come  upon  in 
Goethe  and  Freitag,  and  could  not  find  in  any  dic 
tionary. 

Thyrsis  helped  to  gather  up  her  various  bags  and 
bundles,  and  transported  her  out  to  the  country.  On 
the  train  he  set  to  work  to  gain  her  confidence,  and  was 
forthwith  entertained  with  the  tale  of  all  her  heart- 
troubles.  Back  in  the  Hungarian  village  she  had  fallen 
in  love  with  the  son  of  a  rich  farmer,  quite  in  Hermann 
and  Dorothea  fashion ;  but  alas,  in  this  case  there  had 
been  no  "gute  verstandige  Mutter"  and  no  "wurdiger 
Pfarrer" — instead  there  had  been  a  hateful  step-mother, 
and  so  the  "treffliches  Madclien"  had  had  to  come  away. 

They  reached  the  little  cottage  at  last ;  and  then  what 
a  house-cleaning  there  was,  what  scrubbing  of  floors 


522  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  brushing  out  the  cobwebs,  and  scouring  of  lamp- 
chimneys  and  scraping  of  kettles  and  sauce-pans !  And 
what  a  relief  it  was  for  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  to  be 
able  to  go  off  for  a  walk  together,  without  first  having 
to  carry  the  baby  up  to  the  farm-house !  And  how  very 
poetical  it  was  to  come  back  and  discover  Dorothea  with 
the  baby  in  her  lap,  feeding  it  a  supper  of  butter- 
brod  with  a  slice  of  raw  bacon! 

As  time  went  on,  alas,  it  came  more  and  more  to  seem 
that  the  Dorothea  idyl  had  not  been  meant  to  be  taken 
as  a  work  of  realism.  The  "treffliches  Madchen"  was 
perhaps  too  kind-hearted ;  her  emotions  were  too  volum 
inous  for  so  small  a  house,  her  personality  seemed 
to  spread  all  over  it.  She  would  sing  Hungarian  love- 
ditties  at  her  work;  and  somehow  calling  these  "folk 
songs"  did  not  help  matters.  Also,  alas,  she  distrib 
uted  about  the  house  strange  odors — of  raw  onions, 
boiled  cabbage  and  perspiration.  So,  after  three  weeks, 
poor  Dorothea  had  to  be  sent  away — weeping  copiously, 
and  bewildered  over  this  cruel  misfortune.  Corydon 
and  Thyrsis  went  back  again  to  washing  their  own 
dishes ;  being  glad  to  pay  the  price  for  quietness  and 
privacy,  and  vowing  that  they  would  never  again  try 
to  "keep  a  servant". 

§  8.  THE  spring-time  had  come;  not  so  much  the 
spring-time  of  poets  and  song-birds,  as  the  spring-time 
of  cold  rains  and  wind.  But  still,  little  by  little,  the 
sun  was  getting  the  better  of  his  enemies ;  and  so  with 
infinite  caution  they  reduced  the  quantity  of  the  baby's 
apparel,  and  got  him  and  his  "bongie  cowtoos"  out 
upon  the  piazza. 

Meantime  Thyrsis  was  over  at  his  own  place,  wrest 
ling  with  the  book  again.  He  had  told  himself  that  it 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        523 

would  be  easy,  now  that  he  was  free  from  the  money- 
terror.  But  alas,  it  was  not  easy,  and  nothing  could 
make  it  easy.  If  he  had  more  energy,  it  only  meant 
that  his  vision  reached  farther,  and  set  him  a  harder 
task.  Never  in  his  life  did  he  write  a  book,  the  last 
quarter  of  which  was  not  to  him  a  nightmare  labor. 
He  would  be  staggering,  half  blind  with  exhaustion — 
like  a  runner  at  the  end  of  a  long  race,  with  a  rival 
close  at  his  heels. 

Also,  as  usual,  his  stomach  was  beginning  to  weaken 
under  the  strain.  He  would  come  over  sometimes,  late 
in  the  afternoon,  and  lay  his  head  in  Corydon's  lap, 
almost  sobbing  from  weariness ;  and  yet,  after  he  had 
eaten  a  little  and  helped  her  with  the  hardest  of  her 
tasks,  he  would  go  away  again,  and  work  half  through 
the  night.  There  was  nothing  else  he  could  do — there 
was  no  escaping  from  the  thing ;  if  he  lay  down  to  rest, 
or  went  for  a  walk,  it  would  be  only  to  think  about  it 
the  whole  time.  He  would  feel  that  he  was  not  getting 
enough  exercise,  and  he  would  drive  himself  to  some 
bodily  tasks ;  but  there  was  never  anything  that  he 
could  do,  that  he  did  not  have  the  book  eating  away  at 
his  mind  in  the  meantime.  It  was  one  of  the  calamities 
of  his  life  that  there  was  no  way  for  him  to  play;  all 
he  could  do  was  to  take  a  stroll  with  Corydon,  or  to 
tramp  over  the  country  by  himself. 

He  finished  the  book  in  May ;  and  he  knew  that  it  was 
good.  He  sent  it  off  to  Mr.  Ardsley,  and  Mr.  Ardsley, 
too,  declared  himself  satisfied,  and  sent  the  balance  of 
the  money.  So  Thyrsis  sank  back  to  get  his  breath,  and 
to  put  back  some  flesh  upon  his  skeleton.  He  was  wont 
to  say  when  he  was  writing,  one  could  measure  his 
progress  upon  a  scales ;  every  five  thousand  words  he 
finished  cost  him  a  Shylock's  price. 


524  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

This  summer  was,  upon  the  whole,  the  happiest  time 
they  had  yet  known.  The  book  was  scheduled  to  appear 
early  in  September ;  and  they  had  money  enough  to  last 
them  meantime,  with  careful  economy.  Their  little  home 
was  beautiful ;  they  planted  some  sweet  peas  and  roses, 
and  Thyrsis  even  began  to  dig  at  a  vegetable-garden. 
Also,  it  was  strawberry-time,  and  cherry-time  was  near ; 
nor  did  they  overlook  the  fact  that  they  lived  in  close 
proximity  to  a  peach-orchard,  These,  perhaps,  were 
prosaic  considerations,  and  not  of  the  sort  which  Thyr 
sis  had  been  accustomed  to  associate  with  spring-time. 
But  this  he  hardly  realized — so  rapidly  was  the  discip 
line  of  domesticity  bringing  his  haughty  spirit  to  terms  ! 

He  built  a  rustic  seat  in  the  woods,  where  they  might 
sit  and  read;  he  built  a  table  beside  the  house,  where 
the  dishes  might  be  washed  under  the  blue  sky;  and 
he  perfected  an  elaborate  set  of  ditches  and  dykes,  so 
that  the  rain-storms  would  not  sweep  away  their  milk 
and  butter  in  the  stream.  He  talked  of  building  a  pen 
for  chickens — and  might  have  done  so,  only  he  dis 
covered  that  the  perverse  creatures  would  not  lay  ex 
cept  at  the  time  when  eggs  were  cheap  and  one  did  not 
care  so  much  about  them.  He  even  figured  on  the  cost 
of  a  cow,  and  the  possibility  of  learning  to  milk  it ;  and 
was  so  much  enthralled  by  these  bucolic  occupations 
that  he  wrote  a  magazine-article  to  acquaint  his  strug 
gling  brother  and  sister  poets  with  the  fact  that  they, 
too,  might  escape  to  the  country  and  live  in  a  home 
made  house ! 

With  the  article  there  went  a  picture  of  the  house, 
and  also  one  of  the  baby,  who  had  been  waxing  enor 
mous,  and  now  constituted  a  fine  advertisement.  The 
winter  had  seemed  to  agree  with  him,  and  the  summer 
agreed  with  him  even  better.  Thyrsis  would  smile  now 


THE  MASTERS   OF   THE   SNARE        525 

and  then,  thinking  of  his  ideas  of  martyrdom ;  it  was 
made  evident  that  one  member  of  the  family  was  not 
minded  for  anything  of  the  sort.  The  parents  might 
become  so  much  absorbed  in  their  soul-problems  that 
they  forgot  the  dinner-hour;  but  one  could  have  set 
his  watch  by  the  appetite  of  the  baby.  Nature  had 
provided  him,  among  other  protections,  with  a  truly 
phenomenal  pair  of  lungs ;  and  whenever  life  took  a 
course  that  was  not  satisfactory  to  him,  he  would  roar 
his  face  to  a  terrifying  purple. 

He  was  one  overwhelming  and  incessant  outcry  for 
adventure.  He  would  toddle  all  day  about  the  place, 
getting  his  "mungies"  into  all  sorts  of  messes.  He  was 
hard  to  fit  into  so  small  a  place,  and  there  were  times 
when  his  parents  were  tempted  to  wish  that  some  phe 
nomenon  a  trifle  less  portentous  had  fallen  to  their  lot. 
But  for  the  most  part  he  was  a  great  hope — a  sort  of 
visible  atonement  for  their  sufferings.  He  at  least  was 
an  achievement ;  he  was  something  they  had  done.  And 
he  could  not  be  undone,  nor  doubted — he  put  all  skep 
ticism  to  flight.  In  his  vicinity  there  was  no  room  for 
pessimistic  philosophies,  for  Weltschmerz  or  Karma. 

Thyrsis  would  sit  now  and  then  and  watch  him  at 
play,  and  think  thoughts  that  went  deep  into  the  mean 
ing  of  things.  Here  was,  in  its  very  living  presence, 
that  blind  will-to-be  which  had  seized  them  and  flung 
them  together.  And  it  seemed  to  Thyrsis  that  somehow 
Nature,  with  her  strange  secret  chemistry,  had  repro 
duced  all  the  elements  they  had  brought  to  that  union. 
This  child  was  immense,  volcanic,  as  their  impulse  had 
been ;  he  was  intense,  highly-strung,  and  exacting — 
and  these  qualities  too  they  had  furnished.  Curious 
also  it  was  to  observe  how  Nature,  having  accomplished 
her  purpose,  now  flung  aside  her  concealments  and  de- 


526  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

vices.  From  now  on  they  existed  to  minister  to  this 
new  life-phenomenon,  to  keep  it  happy  and  prosperous ; 
and  she  cared  not  how  plain  this  might  become  to  them 
— she  feared  not  to  taunt  and  humiliate  them.  And 
they  accepted  her  sentence  meekly,  they  no  longer  tried 
to  oppose  her.  Her  will  was  become  an  axiom  which 
they  never  disputed,  which  they  never  even  discussed. 
No  matter  what  might  happen  to  them  in  future,  the 
Child  must  go  on ! 

§  9.  THYRSIS  utilized  this  summer  of  leisure  to  be 
gin  a  course  of  reading  in  Socialism — a  subject  which 
had  been  stretching  out  its  arms  to  him  ever  since  he 
had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Henry  Darrell.  He  had 
held  away  from  it  on  purpose,  not  wishing  to  compli 
cate  his  mind  with  too  many  problems.  But  now  he  had 
finished  with  history,  and  was  free  to  come  back  to  the 
world  of  the  present. 

There  were  the  pamphlets  that  Darrell  had  given  him, 
and  there  was  Paret's  magazine.  Strange  to  say,  the 
latter's  reckless  jesting  with  the  philanthropists  and 
reformers  no  longer  offended  Thyrsis — he  had  been 
travelling  fast  along  the  road  of  disillusionment.  Also, 
there  was  a  Socialist  paper  in  New  York — "The 
Worker" ;  and  more  important  still,  there  was  the  "Ap 
peal  to  Reason".  Thyrsis  came  upon  a  chance  refer 
ence  to  this  paper,  which  was  published  in  a  little  town 
in  Kansas,  and  he  was  astonished  to  learn  that  it 
claimed  a  circulation  of  two  hundred  thousand  copies 
a  week.  He  became  a  subscriber,  and  after  that  the 
process  of  his  "conversion"  was  rapid. 

The  Appeal  was  an  "agitation-paper".  Its  business 
was  to  show  that  side  of  the  capitalist  process  which 
other  publications  tried  to  conceal,  or  at  any  rate  to 


THE   MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        5*7 

gild  and  dress  up  and  make  presentable.  Each  week 
came  four  closely-printed  newspaper-pages,  picturing 
horrors  in  mills  and  mines,  telling  of  oppression  and 
injustice,  of  unemployment  and  misery,  accident, 
disease  and  death.  There  would  be  accounts  of  political 
corruption — of  the  buying  of  legislatures  and  courts, 
of  the  rule  of  "machines"  of  graft  in  city  and  state 
and  nation.  There  would  be  tales  of  the  manners  and 
morals  of  the  idle  rich,  set  against  others  of  the  suf 
ferings  of  the  poor.  And  week  by  week,  as  he  read 
and  pondered,  Thyrsis  began  to  realize  the  absurd  in 
adequacy  of  the  placid  statement  which  he  had  made 
to  his  first  Socialist  acquaintance — that  the  solution  of 
such  problems  was  to  be  left  to  "evolution".  It  be 
came  only  too  clear  to  him  that  here  was  another  war 
— the  class-war ;  and  that  it  was  being  fought  by  the 
masters  with  every  weapon  that  cunning  and  greed 
could  lay  hands  upon  or  contrive.  In  that  struggle 
Thyrsis  saw  clearly  that  his  place  was  in  the  ranks 
of  the  disinherited  and  dispossessed. 

This  was  not  a  difficult  decision ;  for  in  the  first  place 
he  was  one  of  the  disinherited  and  dispossessed  himself ; 
and  in  the  next  place,  even  before  the  "economic  screw" 
had  penetrated  his  consciousness,  he  had  been  a  rebel 
in  his  sympathies  and  tastes.  Jesus,  Isaiah,  Milton, 
Shelley — :such  men  as  these  had  been  the  friends  of  his 
soul;  and  he  had  sought  in  vain  for  their  spirit  in 
modern  society — he  had  thought  that  it  was  dead,  and 
that  he,  and  a  few  other  lonely  dreamers  in  garrets, 
were  the  only  ones  who  knew  or  cared  about  it.  But 
now  he  came  upon  the  amazing  discovery  that  this 
spirit,  driven  from  legislative-halls  and  courts  of  jus 
tice,  from  churches  and  schools  and  editorial  sanctums, 
had  flamed  into  life  in  the  hearts  of  the  working  class, 


528  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  was  represented  in  a  political  party  which  nun* 
bered  some  thirty  millions  of  adherents  and  cast  some 
seven  million  votes! 

Beginning  nearly  a  century  ago,  these  workingmen 
had  taken  the  spirit  of  Jesus  and  Isaiah  and  Milton 
and  Shelley,  and  had  worked  out  a  scientific  basis  for 
it,  and  a  method  whereby  it  could  be  made  to  count  in 
the  world  of  affairs.  They  had  analyzed  all  the  evils 
of  modern  society — poverty  and  luxury,  social  and  po 
litical  corruption,  prostitution,  crime  and  war;  they 
had  not  only  discovered  the  causes  of  them,  but  had  laid 
down  with  mathematical  precision  the  remedies,  and  had 
gone  on  to  carry  the  remedies  into  effect.  In  every 
civilized  land  upon  the  globe  they  were  at  work  as  a 
political  party  of  protest;  they  were  holding  conven 
tions  and  adopting  programs ;  they  had  an  enormous 
literature,  they  were  publishing  newspapers  and  maga 
zines,  many  of  them  having  circulations  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  copies. 

The  strangest  thing  of  all  was  this.  Thyrsis  was  an 
educated  man — or  was  supposed  to  be.  He  had  spent 
five  years  in  schools,  and  nine  years  in  colleges  and  uni 
versities  ;  he  had  given  the  scholars  of  the  world  full  op 
portunity  to  guide  him  to  whatever  was  of  importance. 
Also,  he  had  been  an  omnivorous  reader  upon  his  own 
impulse ;  and  here  he  was,  at  the  end  of  it  all — practi 
cally  ignorant  that  this  enormous  movement  existed! 

In  economic  classes  in  college  there  had,  of  course, 
been  some  mention  of  Socialism;  but  this  had  been  of 
the  Utopian  variety,  the  dreams  of  Plato  and  St.  Simon 
and  Fourier.  There  had  been  some  account  of  the  in 
numerable  communities  which  had  sprung  up  in  Amer 
ica — with  careful  explanation,  however,  that  they  had 
all  proven  failures.  Also  one  heard  vaguely  of  Marx 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE        529 

and  Lassalle,  two  violent  men,  whose  ideas  were  still 
popular  among  the  ignorant  masses  of  Europe,  but 
could  be  of  no  concern  to  the  fortunate  inhabitants  of 
a  free  Republic. 

And  then,  after  this,  to  come  upon  some  piece  of  writ 
ing — such  as,  for  instance,  the  "Communist  Manifesto" ! 
To  read  this  mile-stone  in  the  progress  of  civiliza 
tion,  this  marvellous  exposition  of  the  development  of 
human  societies,  and  of  the  forces  which  drive  and  con 
trol  them;  and  to  realize  that  two  lonely  students,  who 
had  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  exploited  toilers,  had  been 
able  to  predict  the  whole  course  of  political  and  in 
dustrial  evolution  for  sixty  years,  and  to  foresee  and 
expound  with  precision  the  ultimate  outcome  of  the 
whole  process — matters  of  which  the  orthodox  econo 
mists  were  still  as  ignorant  as  babes  unborn ! 

Or  to  discover  the  writings  of  such  a  man  as  Karl 
Kautsky,  the  intellectual  leader  of  the  modern  move 
ment  in  Germany ;  such  books  as  "The  Social  Revolu 
tion",  and  "The  Road  to  Power"— in  which  one  seemed 
to  see  a  giant  of  the  mind,  standing  in  a  death-duel 
with  those  forces  of  night  and  destruction  that  still 
made  of  the  fair  earth  a  hell !  With  what  accuracy  he 
was  able  to  measure  the  strength  of  these  powers  of 
evil,  to  anticipate  their  every  move,  to  plan  the  exact 
parry  with  which  to  meet  them !  To  Thyrsis  he  seemed 
like  some  general  commanding  an  army  in  battle,  with 
the  hopes  of  future  ages  hanging  upon  his  skill.  But 
this  was  a  general  who  fought,  not  with  sword  and 
fire,  but  with  ideas ;  a  conqueror  in  the  cause  of  "right 
reason  and  the  will  of  God".  He  wrote  simply,  as  a 
scientist;  and  yet  one  could  feel  the  passion  behind  the 
quiet  words — the  hourly  shock  of  the  incessant  con 
flict,  the  grim  persistence  which  pressed  on  in  the  face 


530  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  obloquy  and  persecution,  the  courage  which  had  been 
tested  through  generations  of  anguish  and  toil. 

Thyrsis'  mind  rushed  through  these  things  like  a 
prairie-fire;  and  all  the  time  that  he  read,  his  wonder 
grew  upon  him.  How  could  he  have  been  kept  ignorant 
of  them?  He  was  quick  to  pounce  upon  the  essential 
fact,  that  this  was  no  accident ;  it  was  something  that 
must  have  been  planned  and  brought  about  deliberately. 
He  had  thought  that  he  was  being  educated,  when  in 
reality  he  was  being  held  back  and  fenced  off  from 
truth.  It  was  a  world-wide  conspiracy — it  was  that 
very  class-war  which  the  established  order  was  waging 
upon  these  men  and  their  ideas ! 

§  10.  IT  was  not  difficult  for  any  one  to  understand 
the  ideas,  if  he  really  wished  to.  They  began  with  the 
fact  of  "surplus  value".  One  man  employed  another 
man  for  the  sake  of  the  wealth  he  could  be  made  to  pro 
duce,  over  what  he  was  paid  as  wages.  That  seemed 
obvious  enough ;  and  yet,  what  consequences  came  from 
following  it  up !  Throughout  human  history  men  had 
been  setting  other  men  to  work ;  whether  they  were 
called  slaves,  or  serfs,  or  laborers,  or  servants,  the 
motive-power  which  had  set  them  to  work  had  been 
the  desire  for  "surplus  value".  And  as  the  process 
went  on,  those  who  appropriated  the  profits  combined 
for  mutual  protection ;  and  so  out  of  the  study  of  "sur 
plus  value"  came  the  discovery  of  the  "class-struggle". 
Human  history  was  the  tale  of  the  arising  of  some 
dominating  class,  and  of  the  struggle  of  some  subject 
class  for  a  larger  share  of  what  it  produced.  Human 
governments  were  devices  by  which  the  master-class 
preserved  its  power ;  and  whatever  may  have  been  the 
original  purposes  of  arts  and  religions,  in  the  end  they 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        531 

had  always  been  seized  by  the  master-class,  and  used 
as  aids  in  the  same  struggle. 

One  came  to  the  culmination  of  the  process  in  modern 
capitalist  society.  Here  was  a  class  entrenched  in 
power,  owning  the  sources  of  wealth,  the  huge  machines 
whereby  it  was  produced,  and  the  railroads  whereby  it 
was  distributed,  and  above  all,  the  financial  resources 
upon  which  the  other  processes  depended.  One  saw  this 
class  holding  itself  in  power  by  means  of  the  policeman's 
club  and  the  militiaman's  rifle,  by  machine-gun  and 
battle-ship;  one  saw  that,  whether  by  bribery  or  by 
outright  force,  it  had  seized  all  the  powers  of  govern 
ment,  of  legislatures  and  executives  and  courts.  One 
saw  that  in  the  same  way  it  had  seized  upon  the  sources 
of  ideas ;  it  controlled  the  newspapers  and  the  churches 
and  the  colleges,  that  it  might  shape  the  thoughts  of 
men  and  keep  them  content.  It  set  up  in  places  of 
authority  men  whose  views  were  agreeable  to  it — who 
believed  in  the  beneficence  of  its  rule  and  the  permanence 
of  its  system ;  who  would  pour  out  ridicule  and  contempt 
upon  those  who  suggested  that  any  other  system  might 
be  conceivable.  And  so  the  class-war  was  waged,  not 
merely  in  the  world  of  industry  and  politics,  but  also 
in  the  intellectual  world. 

And  step  by  step,  as  the  processes  of  capitalism  cul 
minated,  this  war  increased  in  bitterness  and  intensity. 
For,  of  course,  as  capital  heaped  up  and  its  control 
became  concentrated,  the  ratio  of  exploitation  increased. 
The  great  mass  of  labor  was  unorganized  and  helpless ; 
whereas  the  masters  had  combined  and  fixed  their  prices ; 
and  so  day  by  day  the  cost  of  living  increased,  and 
misery  and  discontent  increased  with  it.  As  capital  ex 
panded,  and  new  machines  of  production  were  added, 
there  were  more  and  more  goods  to  sell,  and  more  and 


632  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

more  difficulty  in  finding  markets ;  and  so  came  over 
production  and  unemployment,  panics  and  crises ;  so 
came  wars  for  foreign  markets — with  new  opportuni 
ties  of  plunder  for  the  exploiters  and  new  hardships 
and  new  taxes  for  the  producers.  And  so  was  fulfilled 
the  prophecy  of  Marx  and  Engels ;  under  the  pressure 
of  bitter  necessity  the  proletariat  was  organizing  and 
disciplining  itself,  training  its  own  leaders  and  thinkers, 
forming  itself  into  a  world-wide  political  party,  whose 
destiny  it  was  to  conquer  the  powers  of  government  in 
every  land,  and  use  them  to  turn  out  the  exploiters,  and 
to  put  an  end  to  the  rule  of  privilege. 

This  change  was  what  the  Socialists  meant  by  the 
"revolution" — the  transfer  of  the  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production;  and  it  was  about  that  issue  that 
the  class-war  was  waged.  Nothing  else  but  that 
counted;  without  that  all  reform  was  futility,  and  all 
benevolence  was  mockery,  and  all  knowledge  was  ig 
norance.  So  long  as  the  means  of  producing  necessities 
were  owned  by  a  few,  and  used  for  the  advantage  of  a 
few,  just  so  long  must  there  be  want  in  the  midst  of 
plenty,  and  darkness  over  all  the  earth.  Whatever  evil 
one  went  out  into  the  world  to  combat,  he  came  to 
realize  that  he  could  do  nothing  against  it,  because  it 
was  bound  up  with  the  capitalist  system,  was  in  fact 
itself  that  system.  If  little  children  were  shut  up  in 
sweat-shops,  if  women  were  sold  into  brothels,  it  was 
not  for  any  fault  of  theirs,  it  was  not  the  work  of  any 
devil — it  was  simply  because  of  the  "surplus  value" 
they  represented.  If  weaker  nations  were  conquered 
and  "civilized",  that,  too,  was  for  "surplus  value". 
And  these  epidemics  of  "graft"  that  broke  out  upon 
the  body  politic — they  were  not  accidental  or  sporadic 
things,  and  they  were  not  to  be  remedied  by  putting 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE        533 

any  number  of  men  in  jail;  they  were  to  be  understood 
as  the  system  whereby  an  industrial  oligarchy  had  ren 
dered  impotent  a  political  democracy,  and  had  fenced 
it  out  from  the  fields  of  privilege. 

And  so  also  was  it  with  the  dullness  and  sterility  that 
prevailed  in  the  intellectual  world.  The  master-class 
did  not  want  ideas — it  only  wanted  to  be  let  alone;  and 
so  it  put  in  the  seats  of  authority  men  who  were  blind 
to  the  blazing  beacon-fires  of  the  future.  It  would  be 
no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  intellectual  and  cul 
tural  .system  of  the  civilized  world  was  conducted, 
whether  deliberately  or  instinctively,  for  the  purpose 
of  keeping  the  truth  about  exploitation  from  becoming 
clear  to  the  people. 

The  master-class  owned  the  newspapers  and  ran  them. 
It  had  built  and  endowed  the'  churches,  and  taught  the 
clergy  to  feed  out  of  its  hand.  In  the  same  way  it  had 
founded  the  colleges,  and  named  the  trustees,  who  in 
turn  named  the  presidents  and  professors.  The  ordi 
nary  mortal  took  it  for  granted  that  because  vener 
able  bishops  and  dignified  editors  and  learned  college- 
professors  were  all  in  agreement  as  to  a  certain  truth, 
there  must  be  some  inherent  probability  in  that  truth; 
and  never  once  perceived  how  the  cards  were  stacked 
and  the  dice  loaded — how  those  clergymen  and  editors 
and  professors  had  all  been  selected  because  they  be 
lieved  that  truth  to  be  true,  and  believed  the  contrary 
falsehood  to  be  false ! 

And  how  smoothly  and  automatically  the  system 
worked !  How  these  dignitaries  stood  together,  and  held 
up  each  other's  hands,  maintaining  the  august  tradi 
tion,  the  atmosphere  of  authority  and  power !  The 
bishops  praising  the  editors,  and  the  editors  praising 
the  professors,  and  the  professors  praising  the  bishops ! 


534  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

And  when  the  circle  was  completed,  what  Use  majeste 
it  seemed  for  an  ordinary  mortal  to  oppose  their  con 
clusions  ! 

The  bishops,  one  perceived,  were  "orthodox" — that 
is  to  say  they  were  concerned  with  barren  formulas ; 
and  they  were  "spiritual" — they  were  concerned  with 
imaginary  future  states  of  bliss.  The  editors  were 
"safe"  and  "conservative" — that  is  to  say,  their  souls 
were  dead  and  their  eyes  were  sealed  and  their  god  was 
property.  And  when  it  came  to  the  selecting  of  the 
college  professors,  of  the  men  who  were  to  guide  and 
instruct  the  forthcoming  generations — what  precau 
tions  would  be  taken  then !  What  consultations  and  in 
vestigations,  what  testimonials  and  interviews  and  exam 
inations  !  For  after  all,  in  these  new  days,  it  could  be 
no  easy  matter  to  find  men  whose  minds  were  sterilized, 
who  could  face  without  blenching  all  the  horrors  of  the 
capitalist  regime !  Who  could  see  courts  and  congresses 
bought  and  sold ;  who  could  see  children  ground  up  in 
mills  and  factories,  and  women  driven  by  the  lash  of 
want  to  sell  their  bodies ;  who  could  see  the  surplus  of 
the  world's  wealth  squandered  in  riot  and  debauchery, 
and  the  nations  armed  and  drilled  and  sent  out  to 
slaughter  each  other  in  the  quest  for  more.  Who  could 
know  that  all  these  things  existed,  and  yet  remain  in 
their  cloistered  halls  and  pursue  the  placid  ways  of 
scholarship;  who  could  teach  history  which  regarded 
them  as  inevitable ;  who  could  care  for  literature  that 
had  been  made  for  the  amusement  of  slave-drivers,  and 
art  which  existed  for  the  sake  of  art,  and  not  for  the 
sake  of  humanity ;  who  could  know  everything  that  was 
useless,  and  teach  everything  that  was  uninteresting, 
and  could  be  dead  at  once  to  the  warnings  of  the  past, 
and  to  all  that  was  vital  and  important  in  the  present. 


THE  MASTERS  OF   THE   SNARE        535 

§  11.  NOT  since  he  had  discovered  the  master-key 
of  Evolution  had  Thyrsis  come  upon  any  set  of  ideas 
that  meant  so  much  to  him.  It  was  not  that  these  were 
new  to  him — they  were  the  stuff  out  of  which  his  whole 
life  had  been  made;  but  here  they  were  ordered  and 
systematized — he  had  a  handle  by  which  to  take  hold 
of  them.  The  name  of  this  handle  was  "the  economic 
interpretation  of  history".  And  its  import  was  that 
ideas  did  not  come  by  hazard,  or  out  of  the  air,  but 
were  products  of  social  conditions ;  and  that  when  one 
knew  by  what  method  the  wealth  of  any  community 
was  produced,  and  by  what  class  its  "surplus  value" 
was  appropriated — then  and  then  only  could  one  un 
derstand  the  arts  and  customs,  the  sciences  and  re 
ligions,  which  that  community  would  evolve. 

In  the  light  of  this  great  principle  Thyrsis  had  to 
revise  all  his  previous  knowledge ;  he  had  to  cast  out 
tons  of  rubbish  from  the  chambers  of  his  mind,  and 
start  his  thinking  life  all  over  again.  Just  as,  in  early 
days,  he  had  exchanged  miracles  and  folk-tales  for 
facts  of  natural  science;  so  now  he  saw  political  insti 
tutions  and  social  codes,  literary  and  artistic  canons,  and 
ethical  and  philosophical  systems,  no  longer  as  things 
valid  and  excellent,  having  relationship  to  truth — but 
simply  as  intrenchments  and  fortifications  in  the  class- 
war,  as  devices  which  some  men  had  used  to  deceive  and 
plunder  some  other  men.  What  a  light  it  threw  upon 
philosophy,  for  instance,  to  perceive  it,  not  as  a  search 
for  truth,  but  as  a  search  for  justification  upon  the 
part  of  ruling  classes,  and  for  a  basis  of  attack  upon 
the  part  of  subject-classes ! 

So,  for  instance,  on  the  one  side  one  found  Rousseau, 
and  on  the  other  Herbert  Spencer.  Thyrsis  had  read 
Spencer,  and  had  cordially  disliked  him  for  his  dogma- 


536  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

tism  and  his  callousness;  but  now  he  read  Kropotkin's 
"Mutual  Aid  as  a  Factor  in  Evolution",  and  came  to 
a  realization  of  how  the  whole  science  of  biology  had 
been  distorted  to  suit  the  convenience  of  the  British 
ruling-classes.  Laissez-faire  and  the  Manchester  school 
had  taught  him  that  "each  for  himself  and  the  devil  take 
the  hindmost"  was  the  universal  law  of  life ;  and  he 
had  accepted  it,  because  there  seemed  nothing  else  that 
he  could  do.  But  now,  in  a  sudden  flash,  he  came  to 
see  that  the  law  of  life  was  exactly  the  opposite ;  every 
where  throughout  nature  that  which  survived  was  not 
ruthless  egotism,  but  co-operative  intelligence.  The 
solitary  and  predatory  animals  were  now  almost  en 
tirely  extinct;  and  even  before  the  advent  of  man  with 
his  social  brain,  it  had  been  the  herbivorous  and  gre 
garious  animals  which  had  become  most  numerous. 
When  it  came  to  man,  was  it  not  perfectly  obvious  that 
the  races  which  had  made  civilization  were  those  which 
had  developed  the  nobler  virtues,  such  as  honor  and 
loyalty  and  patriotism?  And  now  it  was  proposed  to 
trample  them  into  the  mire  of  "business" ;  to  abandon 
the  race  to  a  glorified  debauch  of  greed !  And  this 
travesty  of  science  was  taught  in  ten  thousand  schools 
and  colleges  throughout  America — and  all  because  cer 
tain  British  gentlemen  had  wished  to  work  their  cotton- 
operatives  fourteen  hours  a  day,  and  certain  others  had 
wished  to  keep  land  which  their  ancestors  had  seized  in 
the  days  of  William  the  Conqueror !  Shortly  after  this 
Thyrsis  came  upon  Edmond  Kelly's  great  work,  "Gov 
ernment,  or  Human  Evolution" ;  and  so  he  realized  that 
Herbert  Spencer's  social  philosophy  had  at  last  been 
cleared  out  of  the  pathway  of  humanity.  And  this  was 
a  great  relief  to  him — it  was  one  more  back-breaking 
task  that  he  did  not  have  to  contemplate! 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE  SNARE        537 

§  12.  THEN  one  of  his  Socialist  friends  sent  him 
Thorstein  Veblen's  "Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class";  a 
book  which  he  read  in  a  continuous  ebullition  of  glee. 
Truly  it  was  a  delicious  thing  to  find  a  man  who  could 
employ  the  lingo  of  the  ultra-sophisticated  sociologist, 
and  use  it  in  a  demonstration  of  the  most  revolutionary 
propositions.  The  drollery  of  this  was  all  the  more  en 
joyable  because  Thyrsis  could  never  be  sure  that  the 
author  himself  intended  it — whether  his  sesquipedalian 
irony  might  not  be  a  pure  product  of  nature,  untouched 
by  any  human  art. 

Veblen's  book  might  have  been  called  a  study  of  the 
ultimate  destiny  of  "surplus  value" ;  an  economic  in 
terpretation  of  the  social  arts  and  graces,  of  "fashions" 
and  "fads".  Where  men  competed  for  the  fruit  of  each 
other's  labor,  the  possession  of  wealth  was  the  sign  of 
excellence.  This  excellence  men  wished  to  demonstrate 
to  others;  and  step  by  step,  as  the  methods  of  pro 
duction  and  exploitation  changed,  one  might  trace  the 
change  in  the  methods  of  this  demonstration.  The 
savage  chief  began  with  nose-rings  and  anklets,  and  the 
trophies  of  his  fights ;  then,  as  he  grew  richer,  he  would 
employ  courtiers  and  concubines,  and  shine  by  vicarious 
splendor.  He  would  give  banquets  and  build  palaces 
— the  end  being  always  "the  conspicuous  consumption 
of  goods". 

Later  on  came  those  stages  when  he  no  longer  had  to 
gain  his  wealth  by  physical  prowess ;  when  cunning  took 
the  place  of  force,  and  he  ruled  by  laws  and  religions 
and  moral  codes,  and  handed  down  his  power  through 
long  lines  of  descendants.  Then  ostentation  became  a 
highly  specialized  and  conventionalized  thing — its  cri 
terion  changing  gradually  to  "conspicuous  waste  of 
time".  Those  characteristics  were  cultivated  which 


538  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

served  to  advertise  to  the  world  that  their  possessor  had 
never  had  to  earn  wealth,  nor  to  do  anything  for  him 
self  ;  the  aristocrat  became  a  special  type  of  being,  with 
small  feet  and  hands  and  a  feeble  body,  with  special 
ways  of  walking  and  talking,  of  dressing  and  eating 
and  playing.  He  developed  a  separate  religion,  a  sepa 
rate  language,  separate  literatures  and  arts,  separate 
vices  and  virtues.  And  fantastic  and  preposterous  as 
some  of  these  might  seem,  they  were  real  things,  they 
were  the  means  whereby  the  leisure-class  individual  took 
part  in  the  competition  of  his  own  world,  and  secured 
his  own  prestige  and  the  survival  of  his  line.  Some 
philosopher  had  said  that  virtue  is  a  product  like  vine 
gar  ;  and  it  was  a  pleasant  thing  to  discover  that  French 
heels  and  "picture-hats"  and  course-dinners  were  pro 
ducts  also. 

Thyrsis  would  read  passages  of  this  book  aloud  to 
Corydon,  and  they  would  chuckle  over  it  together;  but 
the  reading  of  it  did  not  bring  Corydon  the  same  un 
alloyed  delight.  In  the  leisure-class  regime,  the  woman 
is  a  cherished  possession — for  it  is  through  her  that 
the  ability  to  waste  both  time  and  goods  can  best  be 
shown.  So  came  Veblen's  grim  and  ironic  exposition 
of  the  leisure-class  woman,  an  exposition  which  Cory 
don  found  almost  too  painful  to  be  read.  For 
Corydon's  ancestors,  as  far  back  as  documents  could 
trace,  had  been  members  of  that  class.  They  had 
left  her  the  frail  and  beautiful  body,  conspicuous 
ly  useless  and  dependent;  they  had  left  her  all  the 
leisure-class  impulses  and  cravings,  all  the  leisure-class 
impotences  and  futilities  to  contend  with.  They  had 
taught  her  nothing  about  cooking,  nothing  about  sew 
ing,  nothing  about  babies,  nothing  about  money ;  they 
had  taught  her  only  the  leisure-class  dream  of  "love 


THE  MASTERS  OF  THE   SNARE        539 

in  a  cottage" — and  she  had  run  away  with  a  poor  poet 
to  try  it  out ! 

The  depth  of  these  instincts  in  Corydon  was  amus 
ingly  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  she  always  woke  up 
dull  and  discouraged,  and  was  seldom  really  herself 
until  afternoon ;  and  that  along  about  ten  o'clock  at 
night,  when  for  the  sake  of  her  health  she  should  have 
been  going  to  bed,  she  would  be  laughing,  talking,  sing 
ing,  ablaze  with  interest  and  excitement.  Thyrsis 
would  point  this  out  to  her,  and  please  himself  by 
picturing  the  role  which  she  should  have 'been  filling — 
wearing  an  empire  gown  and  a  rope  or  two  of  rubies, 
and  presiding  in  an  opera-box  or  a  salon.  Corydon 
would  repudiate  all  this  with  indignation;  but  all  the 
same  she  never  escaped  from  the  phrases  of  Veblen — 
she  remained  his  "leisure-class  wife"  from  that  day 
forth.  Not  so  very  long  afterwards  they  came  upon 
Ibsen's  "Hedda  Gabler" ;  and  Thyrsis  shuddered  to  ob 
serve  that  of  all  the  heroines  in  the  world's  literature, 
that  was  the  one  which  most  appealed  to  her.  Nor  did 
he  fail  to  observe  the  working  of  the  thing  in  himself; 
the  subtle  and  deeply-buried  instinct  which  made  him 
prefer  to  be  wretched  with  a  "leisure-class  wife"  rather 
than  to  be  contented  with  a  plebeian  one ! 


BOOK  XIV 
THE  PRICE  OF  RANSOM 


The  famt  grey  of  dawn  was  stealing  across  the  lake; 
and  still  the  spell  was  upon  them. 

"There  thou  art  gone,  and  me  thou  leavest  here 
Sole  in  these  fields!  yet  will  I  not  despair" 

So  she  whispered;  and  he  answered  her — 

"He  loved  his  mates;  but  yet  he  could  not  keep, 
Here  with  the  shepherds  and  the  silly  sheep. 

Some  life  of  men  unblest 

He  knew,  which  made  him  droop,  and  filed  his  head. 
He  went;  his  piping  took  a  troubled  sound 
Of  storms  that  rage  outside  our  happy  ground." 


§  1.  IN  the  course  of  that  summer  there  befell  Cory- 
don  an  adventure;  Thyrsis  had  gone  off  one  day  for  a 
walk,  and  when  he  came  back  she  told  him  about  it — 
how  a  young  lady  had  stopped  at  the  house  to  ask  for 
a  drink  of  water,  and  had  sat  upon  the  piazza  to  rests 
and  had  talked  with  her.  Now  Corydon  was  in  a  state 
of  excitement  over  a  discovery. 

Whenever  Thyrsis  met  a  stranger,  it  was  necessary 
for  him  to  go  through  elaborate  intellectual  processes, 
to  find  the  person  out  by  an  exchange  of  ideas.  And 
if  by  any  chance  the  person  was  insincere,  and  "used 
ideas  as  a  blind  and  a  cover,  then  Thyrsis  might  never 
find  him  out  at  all.  In  other  words,  he  took  people  at 
the  face-value  of  their  cultural  equipment ;  and  only 
after  long  and  tragic  blunderings  could  he  by  any 
chance  get  deeper.  But  with  his  wife  it  happened  quite 
otherwise ;  this  case  was  the  first  which  he  witnessed,  but 
the  same  thing  happened  many  times  afterwards.  With 
her  there  would  be  a  strange  flash  of  recognition;  it 
was  a  sort  of  intuition,  perhaps  a  psychic  thing — who 
could  tell?  By  some  unknown  process  in  soul-chemistry, 
she  would  divine  things  about  a  person  that  he  might 
have  been  a  life-time  in  finding  out. 

It  might  be  a  burst  of  passionate  interest,  or  on  the 
other  hand,  of  repugnance  and  fear.  And  long  years 
of  practice  taught  Thyrsis  that  this  instinct  of  hers 
was  never  to  be  disregarded.  Not  once  in  all  her  life 
did  he  know  her  to  give  her  affection  to  a  base  person ; 
and  if  ever  he  disregarded  her  antipathies,  he  did  it  to 

543 


544  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  cost.  Once  they  were  sitting  in  a  restaurant,  and  a 
man  was  brought  up  to  be  introduced  by  a  friend;  he 
was  a  person  of  not  unpleasant  aspect,  courteous  and 
apparently  a  gentleman,  and  yet  Corydon  flushed,  and 
could  scarcely  keep  her  seat  at  the  table,  and  would 
not  give  the  man  her  hand.  Years  after  Thyrsis  came 
upon  the  discovery  about  this  man,  that  he  made  a  prac 
tice  of  unnatural  vices. 

He  came  home  now  to  find  Corydon  flushed  with  ex 
citement.  "She  has  such  a  beautiful  soul !"  she  ex 
claimed.  "I  never  met  anyone  like  her.  And  we  just 
took  to  each  other ;  she  told  me  all  about  herself,  and 
we  are  going  to  be  friends." 

"Who  is  she?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"She's  visiting  Mr.  Harding,  the  clergyman  at 
Bellevue,"  was  the  answer. 

Bellevue  was  a  town  in  the  valley,  on  the  other  side 
from  the  university ;  it  had  a  Presbyterian  church, 
whose  young  pastor  Thyrsis  had  met  once  or  twice  in 
his  tramps  about  the  country.  This  Miss  Gordon,  it 
seemed,  was  the  niece  of  an  elderly  relative,  his  house 
keeper  ;  she  was  studying  trained  nursing,  and  after 
wards  intended  to  go  out  as  a  missionary  to  Africa. 

"She's  so  anxious  to  meet  you,"  Corydon  went  on. 
"She's  coming  up  to  see  me  to-morrow,  and  she's  going 
to  bring  Mr.  Harding.  You  won't  mind,  will  you, 
Thyrsis?" 

"I  guess  I  can  stand  it  if  he  can,"  said  Thyrsis, 
grimly. 

"You  mustn't  say  anything  to  hurt  their  feelings," 
said  Corydon,  quickly.  "She's  terribly  orthodox,  you 
know ;  and  she  takes  it  so  seriously.  I  was  surprised 
— I  had  never  thought  that  I  could  stand  anybody  like 
that." 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  545 

Thyrsis  merely  grunted. 

"I  guess  ideas  don't  matter  so  much  after  all,"  said 
Corydon.  "It's  a  deep  nature  that  I  care  about.  But 
just  fancy — she  was  pained  because  the  baby  hadn't 
been  baptized !" 

"You  ought  to  have  hid  the  dreadful  truth,"  said 
he. 

"I  couldn't  hide  things  from  her,"  laughed  Corydon. 
"But  she  says  I  can  make  a  Socialist  out  of  her,  and 
she'll  make  a  Christian  out  of  me !" 

His  reply  was,  "Wait  until  she  discovers  the  sensuous 
temperament !" 

But  Corydon  answered  that  Delia  Gordon  had  a 
sensuous  temperament  also.  "She  seemed  to  me  like  a 
Joan  of  Arc.  Just  think  of  her  going  away  from  all 
her  family,  to  a  station  on  the  Congo  River !  She  told 
me  all  about  it — how  wretched  the  people  are,  and  what 
the  women  suffer.  She  w~oke  up  in  the  middle  of  the 
night,  and  a  voice  told  her  to  go — told  her  the  name 
of  the  place.  And  she'd  never  heard  it  before,  and 
hadn't  had  the  least  idea  of  going  away !" 

Thyrsis  was  unmoved  by  this  miracle.  "I  suppose," 
he  said,  "you'll  be  hearing  voices  yourself,  and  going 
with  her.  Tell  me,  is  she  pretty?" 

"You  wouldn't  call  her  pretty,"  said  Corydon,  after 
a  little  thought.  "She's  just — just  dear.  Oh,  Thyrsis, 
I  simply  fell  in  love  with  her !" 

"You  certainly  chose  an  odd  kind  of  an  affinity,"  he 
said.  "A  Presbyterian  missionary!" 

"It's  worse  than  that,"  confessed  Corydon.  "She's 
a  Seventh-day  Adventist." 

"Good  God!     And  what  may  that  be?" 

"Why,  she  keeps  Saturday  instead  of  Sunday.  She 
calls  it  the  Sabbath.  And  she  thinks  that  'evolution'  is 


546  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

wicked,  and  she  believes  in  some  kind  of  a  hell!  She's 
not  just  sure  what  kind,  apparently." 

"You  watch  out,"  said  he,  "or  the  first  thing  you 
know  she'll  be  baptizing  the  baby  behind  your  back." 

"Would  that  do  any  good?"  asked  Corydon,  guile 
lessly. 

He  laughed  as  he  answered,  "It  would,  from  her 
point  of  view." 

To  which  she  replied,  "Well,  if  we  didn't  know  it  and 
the  baby  didn't,  I  guess  it  wouldn't  do  any  harm." 

"And  it  might  save  him  from  some  kind  of  a  hell !" 
.added  Thyrsis. 

§  2.  Miss  GORDON  came  the  next  morning,  Mr. 
Harding  with  her ;  and  the  four  sat  out  under  the  trees 
and  talked.  She  was  a  girl  some  three  years  older  than 
Corydon,  but  much  more  mature ;  she  was  short,  but 
athletic  in  build,  and  with  a  bright  personality.  Thyr 
sis  could  see  at  once  those  fine  qualities  of  idealism  and 
fervor  which  had  attracted  Corydon;  and  to  his  sur 
prise  he  found  that,  in  addition  to  her  religious  virtues, 
the  Lord  had  generously  added  a  sense  of  humor.  So 
Delia  Gordon  was  really  a  person  with  whom  one  could 
have  a  good  time. 

The  Lord  had  not  been  quite  so  generous  with  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Harding,  apparently.  Mr.  Harding  was 
about  thirty  years  of  age,  tall  and  finely-built,  with  a 
slight,  fair  moustache,  and  a  rather  girlish  complexion. 
He  was  evidently  of  a  sentimental  inclination,  very  sensi 
tive,  and  a  lovable  person ;  but  the  sense  of  humor 
Thyrsis  judged  was  underdeveloped.  He  was  inclined 
towards  social-reform,  and  had  a  club  for  working- 
boys  in  his  town,  of  which  he  was  very  proud ;  he  asked 
Thyrsis  to  come  and  give  a  literary  talk  to  these  boys, 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  54T 

and  Thy r sis  replied  that  his  views  of  things  were  hardly 
orthodox.  When  the  clergyman  asked  for  elucidation,, 
Thyrsis  added,  with  a  smile,  "I  don't  believe  that  Jonahs, 
ever  swallowed  the  whale".  Whereupon  Mr.  Harding- 
proceeded  with  all  gravity  to  correct  his  misapprehen 
sion  of  this  legend. 

The  fires  of  friendship,  thus  suddenly  lighted  between 
the  two  girls,  continued  to  burn.  Delia  Gordon  came 
nearly  every  day  to  see  Corydon,  and  once  or  twice 
Corydon  went  down  to  the  town  and  had  lunch  with 
her.  They  told  each  other  all  the  innermost  secrets  of 
their  hearts,  and  in  the  evening  Corydon  would  retail; 
these  to  Thyrsis,  who  was  thus  put  in  the  way  to  acquire 
that  knowledge  of  human  nature  so  essential  to  a. 
novelist.  Delia  had  never  been  in  love,  it  seemed — her 
only  passion  was  for  savage  tribes  along  the  Congo; 
but  Mr.  Harding  had  been  involved  in  a  heart-tragedy 
some  time  ago,  and  was  supposed  to  be  still  inconsolable* 
Incredible  as  it  might  seem,  he  was  apparently  not  in 
love  with  Delia. 

Also,  needless  to  say,  the  pair  did  not  fail  to  thresh 
out  problems  of  theology.  Delia  made  in  due  course 
the  dreadful  discovery  of  the  sensuous  temperament  ? 
and  also  she  probed  to  the  depths  the  frightful  ocean 
of  unorthodoxy  that  was  hid  beneath  the  placid  sur 
face  of  Corydon.  But  strange  to  say,  this  did  not 
repel  her,  nor  make  any  difference  in  their  friendship^ 
Thyrsis  took  that  for  the  sign  of  a  liberal  attitude.,, 
but  Corydon  corrected  him  with  a  shrewd  observation 
— "She's  so  sure  of  her  own  truth  she  can't  believe  in 
the  reality  of  any  other.  She  knows  I'll  come  to  Jesus 
with  her  some  day !" 

It  was  a  wonderful  thing  to  Thyrsis  to  see  his  wife's 
happiness  just  then;  she  was  like  a  flower  which  hasfr 


548  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

been  wilting,  and  suddenly  receives  a  generous  shower 
of  rain.  It  was  just  what  he  had  prayed  for;  having 
seen  all  along  that  her  wretchedness  was  owing  to  her 
being  shut  up  alone  with  him.  So  now  he  did  his  best 
to  repress  his  own  opinions,  and  to  let  the  two  friends 
work  out  their  problem  undisturbed. 

"Oh,  Thyrsis,"  Corydon  exclaimed  to  him*  one  night, 
*'if  I  could  only  have  her  with  me,  I'd  be  happy  always  !" 

"Then  why  don't  you  get  her  to  stay  with  you?" 
asked  Thyrsis,  quickly. 

"Ah,  but  she  wouldn't  think  of  it,"  said  Corydon. 
"She  doesn't  really  care  about  anything  in  the  world 
but  her  Congo  savages  !" 

"We  might  try,"  said  he.  "When  does  she  complete 
her  course?" 

"Not  until  the  end  of  the  year." 

"Well,  we  can  do  a  lot  of  arguing  in  that  time.  And 
when  the  book  is  out,  we'll  have  money  enough,  so  that 
we  can  offer  to  pay  her.  She  might  become  a  sort  of 
^mother's  helper.'  ' 

§  2.  So  Thyrsis  began  a  struggle  with  Jesus  and 
the  Congo  savages,  for  the  possession  of  Delia's  soul. 
He  set  to  work  to  interest  her  in  his  work ;  he  gave  her 
his  first  novel,  which  contained  no  theology  at  all;  and 
also  "The  Hearer  of  Truth" — the  social  radicalism  of 
which  he  was  pleased  to  see  did  not  alarm  her.  And 
then  he  gave  her  the  war-novel,  and  saw  with  joy  how 
she  was  thrilled  over  that.  He  laid  himself  out  to  make 
his  purpose  and  his  vision  clear  to  her ;  and  then, 
one  afternoon,  when  Corydon  had  a  headache  and  was 
taking  a  nap,  he  led  her  off  to  a  quiet  place  in  the 
woods,  and  set  before  her  all  the  bitter  tragedy  of  their 
lives. 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  549 

He  pictured  the  work  he  had  to  do,  and  the  loneli 
ness  to  which  this  consigned  Corydon ;  he  told  her  of 
the  horrors  they  had  so  far  endured,  and  what  effect 
these  had  had  upon  his  wife.  He  showed  her  what  her 
power  was — how  she  could  make  life  possible  for  both 
of  them.  For  she  had  that  magic  key  which  Thyrsis 
himself  did  not  possess,  she  could  unlock  the  treasure- 
chambers  of  Corydon's  soul. 

But  alas,  Thyrsis  soon  perceived  that  his  efforts  had 
been  in  vain.  Delia  was  stirred  by  his  eloquence,  but 
the  only  effect  was  to  move  her  to  an  equally  eloquent 
account  of  the  sufferings  of  the  natives  of  the  Congo 
basin.  It  was  important  that  he  should  get  his  books 
written ;  but  how  much  more  important  it  was  that  some 
help  should  be  carried  to  these  unhappy  wretches ! 
They  never  saw  any  books,  they  were  altogether  beyond 
his  reach ;  and  who  was  to  take  the  light  to  them  ?  She 
told  him  harrowing  tales  of  sick  women,  beaten  and 
tortured  and  burned  with  fire  to  drive  the  devils  out  of 
them. 

Thyrsis  met  this  by  attempting  to  broaden  the  girl's 
social  consciousness.  He  showed  her  how  the  waves 
of  intelligence,  beginning  at  the  top,  spread  to  the 
lowest  strata  of  society — changing  the  character  of  all 
human  activities,  and  affecting  the  humblest  life.  He 
showed  her  the  capitalist  system,  and  explained  how  it 
worked ;  how  it  reached  to  the  savage  in  the  remotest 
corner  of  the  earth,  and  seized  him  and  made  him  over 
according  to  its  will.  It  was  true,  for  instance — and 
not  in  any  poetic  sense,  but  literally  and  demonstrably 
true — -that  the  fate  of  the  Congo  native  was  determined 
in  Wall  Street,  and  in  the  financial  centres  of  London 
and  Paris  and  Brussels  and  Berlin.  The  essential  thing 
about  the  natives  was  that  they  represented  rubber  and 


550  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ivory.  And  Delia  might  go  there,  and  try  to  teack 
them  and  help  them,  but  she  would  find  that  there  were 
forces  engaged  in  beating  them  down  and  destroying 
them — forces  in  comparison  with  which  she  was  as  help 
less  as  a  child.  It  was  true  of  the  Congo  blacks,  as  it 
was  true  of  the  people  of  the  slums,  of  the  proletariat 
of  the  whole  earth,  that  there  was  no  way  to  help  them 
save  to  overthrow  the  system  which  made  of  them,  not 
human  beings,  but  commodities,  to  be  purchased  and 
passed  through  the  profit-mill,  and  then  flung  into  the 
scrap-heap. 

But  Thyrsis  found  to  his  pain  that  it  was  impossible 
to  make  these  considerations  of  any  real  import  to 
Delia.  She  understood  them,  she  assented  to  them ;  but 
that  did  not  make  them  count.  Her  impulses  came  from 
another  part  of  her  being.  Her  savages  were  naked 
:and  hungry  and  ignorant  and  miserable ;  and  they 
needed  to  be  fed  and  clothed,  and  more  important  yet, 
to  be  baptized  and  saved.  She  was  all  the  more  impelled 
to  her  task  by  the  fact  that  all  the  forces  of  civilization 
•were  arrayed  against  her.  The  fires  of  martyrdom 
T^ere  blazing  in  her  soul.  She  meant  to  throw  herself 
over  a  precipice — and  the  higher  the  precipice,  and  the 
more  jagged  the  rocks  beneath,  the  greater  was  the 
thrill  which  the  prospect  brought  her. 

§  4.  THEY  went  back  to  the  house ;  as  Delia  had 
arranged  to  spend  the  night  with  them,  and  as  Cory- 
don's  headache  was  better,  the  controversy  was  con 
tinued  far  into  the  evening.  Thyrsis  took  no  part  in 
it,  he  listened  while  Corydon  pleaded  for  herself,  and 
pictured  her  loneliness  and  despair. 

Delia  put  her  arms  about  her.  "Don't  you  see, 
dear,"  she  argued — "all  that  is  because  you  are  without 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  551 

a  faith !  You  cast  out  Jesus,  and  deny  him ;  and  so 
how  can  7  help  you?  If  you  believed  what  I  do,  you 
would  not  be  lonely,  even  if  you  were  in  the  heart  of 
Africa." 

"But  how  can  I  believe  what  isn't  true?"  cried  Cory- 
don  ;  and  so  the  skeletons  of  theology  came  forth  and 
rattled  their  bones  once  more. 

A  couple  of  hours  must  have  passed,  while  Thyrsis 
said  nothing,  but  listened  to  Delia  and  watched  her, 
probing  deeply  into  the  agonies  and  futilities  of  life, 
He  had  given  up  all  hope  of  persuading  her  to  stay  with 
them;  he  thought  only  of  the  tragedy,  that  this  noble 
spirit  should  be  tangled  up  and  blundering  about  in  the 
mazes  of  a  grotesque  dogma.  And  the  time  came  when  he 
could  endure  it  no  more ;  something  rose  up  within  him, 
something  tremendous  and  terrible,  and  he  laid  hold 
of  Delia  Gordon's  soul  to  wrestle  with  it,  as  never  be 
fore  had  he  wrestled  with  any  human  soul  except 
Corydon's. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  Thyrsis  loved  the 
religious  people ;  it  was  among  them  that  he  had  been 
brought  up,  and  their  ways  were  his  ways.  This  was 
a  fact  that  came  to  him  rarely  now,  for  he  was  hard- 
driven  and  bitter ;  but  it  was  true  that  when  he  sneered 
at  the  church  and  taunted  it,  he  was  like  a  parent  wha 
whips  a  child  he  loves.  Perhaps  Paret  had  spoken 
truly  in  one  of  his  cruel  jests — that  when  a  man  has 
been  brought  up  religious,  he  can  never  really  get  over 
it,  he  can  never  really  be  free. 

So  now  Thyrsis  spoke  to  Delia  as  one  who  was  him 
self  of  the  faith  of  Jesus ;  he  cried  out  to  her  that  what 
she  wanted  was  what  he  wanted,  that  all  her  attitudes 
and  ways  of  working  were  his.  And  here  were  mon 
strous  evils  alive  upon  the  earth — here  were  all  the 


552  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

forces  of  hell  unleashed,  and  ranging  like  savage  beasts, 
destroying  the  lives  of  men  and  women !  And  those  who 
truly  cared,  those  who  had  the  conscience  and  the  faith 
of  the  world  in  their  keeping — they  were  wasting  their 
time  in  disputations  about  barren  formulas,  questions 
which  had  no  relationship  to  human  life !  Questions  of 
the  meaning  of  old  Hebrew  texts  that  had  often  no  mean 
ing  at  all,  and  of  folk-tales  and  fairy-stories  out  of  the 
nursery  of  the  race — the  problem  of  whether  Jonah 
had  swallowed  the  whale,  *r  the  whale  had  swallowed 
Jonah — the  problem  of  whether  it  was  on  Friday  or 
Saturday  that  the  Lord  had  finished  the  earth.  Because 
of  such  things  as  this,  they  drove  all  thinking  men  from 
their  ranks,  they  degraded  and  made  ridiculous  the 
very  name  of  faith !  As  he  went  on,  the  agony  of  this 
swept  over  Thyrsis — until  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  he 
had  the  whole  Christian  Church  before  him,  and  was 
pleading  with  it  in  the  voice  of  Jesus.  Here  was  a  new 
crucifixion — a  crucifixion  of  civilization !  Thyrsis  cried 
out  in  the  words,  "Oh  ye  of  little  faith!"  Truly,  was 
it  not  the  supreme  act  of  infidelity,  to  make  the  spirit 
of  religion,  which  was  one  with  the  impulse  of  all  life — 
the  force  that  made  the  flower  bloom  and  oak-tree  tower 
and  the  infant  cry  for  its  food — to  make  it  dependent 
upon  Hebrew  texts  and  Assyrian  folk-tales !  Delia 
preached  to  him  about  "faith" ;  but  what  was  her  faith 
in  comparison  with  his,  which  was  a  faith  in  all  life — 
which  trusted  the  soul  of  man,  and  reason  as  part  of 
the  soul  of  man,  a  thing  which  God  had  put  in  man  to 
be  used,  and  not  to  be  feared  and  outraged. 

Then  came  Delia.  She  would  not  admit  that  her 
faith  depended  upon  texts  and  legends ;  it  was  a  faith 
in  the  living  God.  She  was  not  afraid  of  reason — she 
did  not  outrage  it — 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  553 

"But  you  do,  you  do !"  cried  Thyrsis.  "Your  whole 
attitude  is  an  outrage  to  it !  You  never  speak  of  'sci 
ence'  except  as  an  evil  thing.  You  told  Corydon  that 
Evolution'  was  wicked!" 

"I  don't  see  how  evolution  can  help  my  faith" — 
began  the  other. 

"That's  just  it!"  cried  Thyrsis  again.  "That  is 
exactly  what  I  mean !  You  do  not  pay  homage  to  truth, 
you  do  not  seek  it  for  its  own  sake !  You  require  that 
it  should  fit  into  certain  formulas  that  you  have  set  up 
— in  other  words  that  it  should  not  interfere  with  your 
texts  and  your  legends !  And  what  is  the  result  of  that 
— you  have  paralyzed  all  your  activities,  you  have  con 
demned  your  intellectual  life  to  sterility!  For  we  live 
in  an  age  of  science,  we  cannot  solve  our  problems  ex 
cept  by  means  of  it ;  the  forces  of  evil  are  using  it,  and 
you  are  not  using  it,  and  so  you  are  like  a  child  in  their 
hands !  Not  one  of  the  social  wrongs  but  could  be  put 
an  end  to — child-labor,  poverty  and  disease,  prostitu 
tion  and  drunkenness,  crime  and  war !  But  you  don't 
know  how,  and  you  can't  find  out  how — simply  because 
you  have  thrown  away  the  sharp  tools  of  the  intellect, 
and  filled  your  mind  with  formulas  that  mean  nothing! 
How  can  you  understand  modern  problems,  when  you 
know  nothing  about  economics?  You  have  rejected 
*evolution' — so  how  can  you  comprehend  the  evolution 
of  society?  How  can  you  know  that  civilization  at  this 
hour  is  going  down  into  the  abyss — dragging  you  and 
your  churches  and  your  Congo  savages  with  it?  I  who 
do  understand  these  things — I  have  to  go  out  and  fight 
alone,  while  you  are  shut  up  in  your  churches,  mumbling 
your  spells  and  incantations,  and  poring  over  your 
Hebrew  texts !  And  think  of  what  I  must  suffer,  know 
ing  as  I  do  that  the  spirit  that  animates  you — the  fervor 


554  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

and  devotion,  the  'hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous 
ness' — would  banish  horror  from  the  earth  forever,  if 
only  it  could  be  guided  by  intelligence!" 

§  5.  ALL  this,  of  course,  was  effort  utterly  wasted. 
Thyrsis  poured  out  his  pleadings  and  exhortations,  his 
longing  and  his  pain ;  and  when  he  had  finished,  the  girl 
was  exactly  where  she  had  been  before — just  as  dis 
trustful  of  "science",  and  just  as  blindly  bent  upon 
getting  away  to  her  savages  and  binding  up  their 
wounds  and  baptizing  them.  And  so  at  last  he  gave  up 
in  despair,  and  left  Delia  to  go  to  bed,  and  went  out  and 
sat  alone  in  the  moonlight. 

Afterwards,  though  it  was  long  after  midnight, 
Corydon  came  out  and  joined  him.  He  saw  that  she 
was  flushed  and  trembling  with  excitement. 

"Thyrsis !"  she  whispered.  "That  was  a  marvellous 
thing!" 

He  pressed  her  hand. 

"And  all  thrown  away !"  she  cried. 

"You  realized  that,  did  you?"  he  asked. 

"I  realized  many  things.  Why  you  set  so  much 
store  by  ideas,  for  instance!  I  see  that  you  are  right 
— one  has  to  think  straight!" 

"It's  like  a  steam-engine,"  said  Thyrsis.  "It  doesn't 
matter  how  much  power  you  get  up,  or  how  fast  you 
make  the  wheels  go — unless  the  switches  are  set  right, 
you  don't  reach  your  destination." 

"You  only  land  in  the  ditch !"  added  Corydon.  "And 
that's  just  the  way  I  felt  to-night — she'd  take  your 
argument  every  time,  and  dump  it  into  a  ditch.  And 
she'd  see  it  there,  and  not  care." 

"She  doesn't  care  about  facts  at  all,  Corydon.  And 
notice  this  also — she  doesn't  care  about  succeeding. 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  555 

That's  the  thing  you  must  get  straight — her  religion 
is  a  religion  of  failure !  It  comes  back  to  that  criticism 
of  Nietzsche's — it's  a  slave-morality.  The  world  be 
longs  to  the  devil ;  and  the  idea  of  taking  it  away  from 
the  devil  seems  to  be  presumptuous.  Even  if  it  could 
be  done,  the  attempt  would  be  "unspiritual' ;  for  the 
'world'  is  something  corrupt — something  that  ought 
not  to  be  saved.  So  you  see,  she's  perfectly  willing  for 
the  Belgians  to  have  the  rubber." 

"  'Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's' !" 
quoted  Corydon. 

"Yes,  and  let  Caesar  spend  them  on  Cleo  de  Merode. 
What  she  wants  is  to  save  the  souls  of  her  savages — 
to  baptize  them,  and  to  perish  gloriously  at  the  work, 
and  then  be  transported  to  some  future  life  that  is 
worth  while.  So  you  see  what  the  immortality-mongers 
do  with  our  morality !" 

"Ah!"  cried  Corydon,  swiftly.  "But  that  need  not 
be  so !" 

"But  it  is  so !"  he  answered. 

"No,  no !"  she  protested.  "You  must  not  say  that ! 
That  is  giving  up — and  I  felt  such  a  different  mood 
in  you  to-night!  I  wanted  to  tell  you — we  must  do 
something  about  it,  Thyrsis !  It  made  me  ashamed  of 
my  own  life.  Here  I  am,  failing  miserably — and  all  that 
work  crying  out  to  be  done!  I  don't  think  I  ever  had 
such  a  sense  of  your  power  before — the  things  you 
might  do,  if  only  you  could  get  free,  if  only  I  didn't 
stand  in  your  way !  Oh,  can't  we  cast  the  old  mis 
takes  behind  us,  and  go  out  into  the  world  and  preach 
that  message?" 

"But,  my  dear,"  said  Thyrsis,  "that  wouldn't  appeal 
to  you  always.  Your  temperament " 

"Never  mind  my  temperament !"  she  cried.    "I  am  sick 


556  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  it,  ashamed  of  it ;  I  want  the  world  to  hear  that' 
trumpet-call!  I  want  you  to  break  your  way  into  the 
churches — to  make  them  listen  to  you,  and  realize  their 
blasphemy  of  life !" 

She  caught  hold  of  him  and  clung  to  him;  he  could 
feel,  like  an  electric  shock,  the  thrill  of  her  excitement. 
He  marvelled  at  the  effect  his  words  had  produced  upon 
her — realizing  all  the  more  keenly,  in  contrast  with 
Delia,  what  a  power  of  mind  he  had  here  to  deal  with. 
"Dearest,"  he  said,  "I  must  put  these  things  into  my 
books.  You  must  stand  by  me  and  help  me  to  put  them 
into  my  books !" 

§  6.  DELIA  GORDON  went  away  to  take  up  her  work 
in  the  city;  but  for  many  months  thereafter  that  mis 
sionary  impulse  stayed  with  them.  They  would  find 
themselves  seized  with  the  longing  to  throw  aside  every 
thing  else,  and  to  go  out  and  preach  Socialism  with  the 
living  voice.  They  were  still  immersed  in  its  literature ; 
they  read  Bellamy's  "Looking  Backward",  and  Blatch- 
ford's  "Merrie  England",  and  Kropotkin's  "Appeal  to 
the  Young".  They  read  another  book  about  England 
that  moved  them  even  more — a  volume  of  sketches  called 
"The  People  of  the  Abyss",  by  a  young  writer  who  was 
then  just  forging  to  the  front — Jack  London.  He  was 
the  most  vital  among  the  younger  writers  of  the  time, 
and  Thyrsis  watched  his  career  with  eager  interest. 
There  was  also  not  a  little  of  wistful  hunger  in  his 
attitude — he  had  visions  of  being  the  next  to  be  caught 
up  and  transported  to  those  far-off  heights  of  popu 
larity  and  power. 

Also,  they  were  kept  in  a  state  of  excitement  by  the 
Socialist  papers  and  magazines  that  came  to  them. 
There  was  a  great  strike  that  summer,  And  they  fol- 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  557 

lowed  the  progress  of  it,  reading  accounts  of  the  dis 
tress  of  the  people.  Every  now  and  then  the  pain  of 
these  things  would  prove  more  than  Thyrsis  could  bear, 
and  he  would  blaze  out  in  some  fiery  protest,  which,  of 
course,  the  Socialist  papers  published  gladly.  So  little 
by  little  Thyrsis  was  coming  to  be  known  in  "the  move 
ment".  Some  of  his  friends  among  the  editors  and  pub 
lishers  made  strenuous  protests  against  this  course, 
but  little  dreaming  how  deeply  the  new  faith  had  im 
pressed  him. 

In  truth  it  was  all  that  Thyrsis  could  do  to  hold  him 
self  in ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  no  longer  cared  about 
anything  save  this  fight  of  the  working-class  for  jus 
tice.  He  was  frightened  by  the  prospect,  when  he 
stopped  to  realize  it;  for  he  could  not  write  anything 
but  what  he  believed,  and  one  could  not  live  by  writing 
about  Socialism.  He  thought  of  his  war-book,  for 
instance.  It  was  but  two  or  three  months  since  he  had 
finished  it,  and  it  was  his  one  hope  for  success  and  free 
dom  ;  and  yet  already  he  had  outgrown  it  utterly.  He 
realized  that  if  he  had  had  to  go  back  and  do  it  over,  he 
could  not;  he  could  never  believe  in  any  war  again, 
never  be  interested  in  any  war  again.  Wars  were  strug 
gles  among  ruling-classes,  and  whoever  won  them,  the 
people  always  lost.  Thyrsis  was  now  girding  up  his 
loins  for  a  war  upon  war. 

So  there  were  times  when  it  seemed  that  a  literary 
career  would  no  longer  be  possible  to  him;  that  he 
would  have  to  cast  his  lot  altogether  with  the  people, 
and  find  his  work  as  an  agitator  of  the  Revolution. 
One  day  a  marvellous  plan  flashed  over  him,  and  he 
came  to  Corydon  with  it,  and  for  nearly  a  week  they 
threshed  it  over,  tingling  with  excitement.  They  would 
sell  their  home,  and  raise  what  money  they  could,  and 


558  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

get  themselves  a  travelling  van  and  a  team  of  horses, 
and  go  out  upon  the  road  on  a  Socialist  campaign ! 

It  was  a  perfectly  feasible  thing,  Thyrsis  declared ; 
they  would  carry  a  supply  of  literature,  and  would  get 
a  commission  upon  subscriptions  to  Socialist  papers. 
He  pictured  them  drawing  up  on  the  main  street  of 
some  country  town,  and  ringing  a  dinner-bell  to  gather 
the  people,  and  beginning  a  Socialist  meeting^  He 
would  make  a  speech,  and  Corydon  would  sell  pam 
phlets  and  books ;  they  had  animated  discussions  as  to 
whether  she  might  not  learn  to  make  a  speech  also.  At 
least,  he  argued,  she  might  sing  Socialist  songs! 

Thyrsis  was  forever  evolving  plans  of  this  sort; 
plans  for  doing  something  concrete,  for  coming  into 
contact  with  the  world  of  every  day.  The  pursuit  of 
literature  was  something  so  cold  and  aloof,  so  com 
fortable  and  conventional;  one  never  pressed  the  hand 
of  a  person  in  distress,  one  never  saw  the  light  of  hope 
and  inspiration  kindling  in  another's  eyes.  So  he  would 
dream  of  running  a  publishing-house  or  a  magazine,  of 
founding  a  library  or  staging  a  play,  of  starting  a 
colony  or  a  new  religion.  And  then,  after  he  had  made 
himself  drunk  upon  the  imagining,  he  would  take  him 
self  back  to  his  real  job.  For  that  summer  his  only  in 
discretions  were  to  buy  several  thousand  copies  of  the 
"Appeal  to  Reason",  and  hire  the  old  horse  and  buggy, 
and  distribute  them  over  some  thirty  square  miles  of 
country ;  also  to  help  to  organize  a  club  for  the  study 
of  Socialism  at  the  university ;  and  finally,  when  he 
was  in  the  city,  to  make  a  fiery  speech  at  a  meeting  of 
some  "Christian  Socialists."  Because  of  this  the  news 
paper  reporters  dug  out  the  accounts  of  his  earlier 
adventures,  and  "wrote  him  up"  with  malicious  banter 
ing.  And  this,  alas — as  the  publisher  pointed  out — 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  559 

was  a  poor  sort  of  preparation  for  the  launching  of  the 
war-novel. 

Needless  to  add,  the  two  did  not  fail  to  wrestle  with 
those  individuals  whom  they  met.  Thyrsis  got  a  col 
lection  of  pamphlets,  judiciously  selected,  and  gave 
them  to  the  butcher  and  the  grocer,  the  store-clerks  and 
the  hack-drivers  in  the  town.  But  a  college-town  was 
a  poor  place  for  Socialist  propaganda,  as  he  realized 
with  sinking  heart ;  its  population  was  made  up  of 
masters  and  servants,  and  there  was  even  more  snob 
bery  among  the  servants  than  among  the  masters.  The 
main  architectural  features  of  the  place  were  fraternity- 
houses  and  "eating-clubs",  where  the  sons  of  the  idle 
rich  disported  themselves ;  once  or  twice  Thyrsis  passed 
through  the  town  after  midnight,  and  saw  these  young 
fellows  reeling  home,  singing  and  screaming  in  various 
stages  of  intoxication.  Then  he  would  think  of  little 
children  shut  up  in  cotton-mills  and  coal-mines,  of 
wromen  dying  in  pottery-works  and  lead-factories ;  and 
on  his  way  home  he  would  compose  a  screed  for  the 
"Appeal  to  Reason". 

§  7.  ANOTHER  victim  of  their  fervor  was  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Harding,  who  stopped  in  to  see  them  several,  times 
upon  his  tramps.  Thyrsis  would  never  have  dreamed 
of  troubling  Mr.  Harding,  but  Corydon  found  "some 
thing  in  him",  and  would  go  at  him  hammer  and 
tongs  whenever  he  appeared.  It  must  have  been  a 
novel  experience  for  the  clergyman ;  it  seemed  to  fasci 
nate  him,  for  he  came  again  and  again,  and  soon 
quite  a  friendship  sprang  up  between  the  two.  She 
would  tell  Thyrsis  about  it  at  great  length,  and  so, 
of  course,  he  had  to  change,  his  ideas  about  Mr. 
Harding. 


560  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Don't  you  see  how  fine  and  sensitive  he  is?"  she 
would  plead. 

"No  doubt,  my  dear,"  said  Thyrsis.  "But  don't 
you  think  he's  maybe  just  a  bit  timid?" 

"Timid,"  she  replied.  "But  then  think  of  his  train 
ing!  And  think  what  you  are!" 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I'm  pretty  bad,"  he  admitted. 

This  discussion  took  place  after  he  and  Mr.  Harding 
had  had  an  argument,  in  which  Thyrsis  had  remarked 
casually  that  modern  civilization  was  "crucifying  Jesus 
all  over  again."  And  when  Mr.  Harding  asked  for 
enlightenment,  Thyrsis  answered,  "My  dear  man,  we 
crucify  him  according  to  the  constitution.  We  teach 
the  profession  of  crucifying  him.  We  invest  our  capital 
in  the  business  of  crucifying  him.  We  build  churches 
and  crucify  him  in  his  own  name !" 

After  which  explosion  Corydon  said,  "You  let  me 
attend  to  Mr.  Harding.  I  understand  him,  and  how 
he  feels  about  things." 

"All  right,  my  dear,"  assented  Thyrsis.  "When  I 
see  him  coming,  I'll  disappear." 

But  that  would  not  do  either,  it  appeared,  for  Mr. 
Harding  was  a  conventional  person,  and  it  was  neces 
sary  that  he  should  feel  he  was  calling  on  the  head  of 
the  family. 

"Then,"  said  Thyrsis,  "I'm  supposed  to  sit  by  and 
serve  as  a  chaperon?" 

"You're  to  answer  questions  when  I  ask  you  to," 
replied  Corydon. 

Through  Mr.  Harding  they  made  other  acquaint 
ances  in  Bellevue.  There  was  a  Mrs.  Jennings,  the 
wife  of  the  young  principal  of  the  High  School;  they 
were  simple  and  kindly  people,  who  became  fond  of 
Corydon,  and  would  beg  her  to  visit  them.  The  girl 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  561 

was  craving  for  companionship,  and  she  would  plead 
with  Thyrsis  to  accompany  her,  and  subject  himself 
to  the  agonies  of  "ping-pong"  and  croquet;  and  once 
or  twice  he  submitted — and  so  one  might  have  beheld 
them,  at  a  lawn-party,  hotly  pressed  by  half  a  dozen 
disputants,  in  a  debate  concerning  the  nature  of  Amer 
ican  institutions,  and  the  future  of  religion  and  the 
home! 

Thyrsis  seldom  took  human  relationships  seriously 
enough  to  get  excited  in  such  arguments ;  but  Cory- 
don,  with  her  intense  and  personal  temperament,  made 
an  eager  and  uncomfortable  propagandist.  How  could 
anyone  fail  to  see  what  was  so  plain  to  her?  And  so 
she  would  bring  books  and  pamphlets,  and  lend  them 
about.  There  was  a  young  man  named  Harry  Stuart,  a 
fine,  handsome  fellow,  who  taught  drawing  at  the  High 
School.  In  him,  also,  Corydon  discovered  possibilities ; 
and  she  repudiated  indignantly  the  idea  that  his  soul 
ful  eyes  and  waving  brown  hair  had  anything  to  do 
with  it.  Harry  Stuart  was  a  guileless  and  enthusiastic 
member  of  the  State  militia ;  but  in  spite  of  this  sinister 
fact,  Corydon  went  at  him.  She  soon  had  her  victim 
burning  the  midnight  oil  over  Kautsky  and  Hyndman ; 
and  behold,  before  the  autumn  had  passed,  the  ill-fated 
drawing-teacher  had  resigned  from  the  State  militia, 
and  was  doing  cartoons  for  the  "Appeal  to  Reason" ! 

§  8.  CORYDON'S  excitement  over  these  questions  was 
all  the  greater  because  she  was  just  then  making  the 
discovery  of  the  relationship  of  Socialism  to  the  prob 
lems  of  her  own  sex.  Some  one  sent  her  a  copy  of 
Charlotte  Oilman's  "Women  and  Economics" ;  she  read 
it  at  a  sitting,  and  brought  it  to  Thyrsis,  who  thus 
came  to  understand  the  scientific  basis  of  yet  another 


562  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

article  of  his  faith.  He  went  on  to  other  books — to 
Lester  Ward's  "Sociology",  and  to  Bebel's  "Woman", 
and  to  the  works  of  Havelock  Ellis.  So  he  realized  that 
women  had  not  always  been  clinging  vines  and  frail 
flowers  and  other  uncomfortable  things ;  and  the  hope 
that  they  might  some  day  be  interested  in  other  matters 
than  fashion  and  sentiment  and  the  pursuit  of  the  male, 
was  not  a  vain  fantasy  and  a  utopian  dream,  but  was 
rooted  in  the  vital  facts  of  life. 

Throughout  nature,  it  appeared,  the  female  was  often 
the  equal  of  the  male ;  and  even  in  human  history  there 
had  been  periods  when  woman  had  held  her  own  with 
man — when  the  bearing  of  children  had  not  been  a  cause 
of  degradation.  Such  had  been  the  case  with  our  racial 
ancestors,  the  Germans ;  as  one  found  them  in  Tacitus, 
their  women  were  strong  and  free,  speaking  with  the 
men  in  the  council-halls,  and  even  going  into  battle  if 
the  need  was  great.  It  was  only  when  they  came  under 
the  Roman  influence,  and  met  slavery  and  its  consequent 
luxury,  that  the  Teutonic  woman  had  started  upon  the 
downward  path.  Christianity  also  had  had  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  it ;  or  rather  the  dogmas  which  a  Roman 
fanatic  had  imposed  upon  the  message  of  Jesus. 

It  was  interesting  to  note  how  one  might  trace  the 
enslavement  of  woman,  step  by  step  with  the  enslavement 
of  labor ;  the  two  things  went  hand  in  hand,  and  stood 
or  fell  together.  So  long  as  life  was  primitive,  woman 
filled  an  economic  function,  and  held  her  own  with  her 
mate.  But  with  slavery  and  exploitation,  the  heaping 
up  of  wealth  and  the  advent  of  the  leisure-class  regime, 
one  saw  the  woman  becoming  definitely  the  appendage 
of  the  man,  a  household  ornament  and  a  piece  of 
property;  securing  her  survival,  not  by  useful  labor, 
but  by  sexual  charm,  and  so  becoming  specialized  as  a 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM 


5tf3 


sex-creature.  For  generations  and  ages  the  male  had 
selected  and  bred  in  her  those  qualities  which  were  most 
stimulating  to  his  own  desires,  which  increased  in  him 
the  sense  of  his  own  dominance ;  and  for  generations 
and  ages  he  taught  the  doctrine  that  the  proper  sphere 
of  woman  was  the  home.  If  he  happened  to  be  a  Ger 
man  emperor,  he  summed  it  up  in  the  sneer  of  "Kuche, 

Kinder,  Kirche".     So  the  woman  became  frail  ancTTrri- 

.*•' ""  •— £—       — .- — 

potent  physically,  and  won  her  success  by  the  only 
method  that  was  open  to  her — by  finding  some  male 
whom  she  could  ensnare. 

Such  had  been  the  conditions.  But  now,  in  the 
present  century,  had  come  machinery,  and  the  develop 
ment  of  woman's  labor ;  and  also  had  come  intelligence, 
and  woman's  discovery  of  her  chains.  So  there  was 
the  suffrage  movement  and  the  Socialist  movement. 
After  the  overthrow  of  the  competitive  wage-system 
and  of  the  leisure-class  tradition,  woman  would  no 
longer  sell  her  sex-functions,  whether  in  marriage  or 
prostitution ;  and  so  the  sex  might  cease  to  survive  by 
its  vices,  and  to  infect  the  whole  race  with  its  intellectual 
and  moral  impotence.  So  would  be  set  free  the  enormous 
force  that  was  locked  up  in  the  soul  of  woman ;  and 
human  life  would  be  transformed  by  the  impulse  of 
emotions  that  were  fundamental  and  primal.  So  Thyr- 
sis  perceived  the  two  great  causes  in  which  the  progress 
of  humanity  was  bound  up — the  emancipation  of  labor 
and  the  emancipation  of  woman ;  to  educate  and  agitate 
and  organize  for  which  became  the  one  service  that  was 
worth  while  in  life. 

§  9.  THE  nights  were  beginning  to  grow  chilly,  and 
they  realized  that  autumn  was  at  hand,  and  faced  the 
prospect  of  another  winter  in  that  lonely  cabin.  Paret, 


564  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

who  had  come  down  to  visit  them,  had  given  it  a  name — 
"the  soap-box  in  a  marsh."  Thyrsis  saw  clearly  that  he 
could  not  settle  down  to  hard  work  while  they  were 
shut  up  there.  Corydon's  headaches  and  prostrations 
seemed  to  be  growing  worse,  and  she  could  simply  not 
get  through  the  winter  without  some  help.  As  the 
book  was  ready,  they  had  some  money  in  prospect,  and 
their  idea  was  that  they  would  buy  a  farm  with  a  good 
house.  So  they  might  keep  a  horse  and  a  cow  and  some 
chickens ;  and  there  might  be  some  outdoor  work  for 
Thyrsis  to  do,  instead  of  trudging  aimlessly  over  the 
country. 

They  utilized  their  spare  time  by  getting  the  old 
horse  and  buggy,  and  inspecting  and  discussing  all  the 
farms  within  five  miles  of  them;  an  occupation  which 
put  a  great  strain  upon  their  diverse  temperaments. 
Thyrsis  would  be  thinking  of  such  matters  as  roads 
and  fruit-trees  and  barns — and  above  all  of  prices ; 
while  Corydon  would  be  concerned  with — alas,  Corydon 
never  dared  to  formulate  her  vision,  even  to  herself. 
She  had  vague  memories  of  dilettante  country-places 
with  great  open  fire-places,  and  exposed  beams,  and  a 
broad  staircase,  and  a  deep  piazza,  and  above  all,  a 
view  of  the  sunset.  Whenever  she  came  upon  any  vague 
suggestion  of  these  luxuries,  her  heart  would  leap  up — 
and  would  then  be  crushed  by  some  reference  to  ten  or 
fifteen  thousand  dollars. 

Corydon  was  a  poor  sort  of  person  to  take  an  inspec 
tion-trip.  She  would  gaze  about  and  say,  "There  might 
be  a  piazza  here" ;  and  then  she  would  look  across  the 
fields  and  add,  "There'd  be  a  good  view  if  it  weren't 
for  those  woods" — and  wave  the  woods  away  with  the 
gesture  of  a  duchess.  So,  of  course^  the  observant 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  565 

farmer  would  add  a  thousand  dollars  to  the  asking- 
price  of  his  property. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  Thyrsis  with  his  remorse 
less  thoroughness  would  insist  on  getting  out  and  in 
specting  some  dilapidated  and  forlorn-looking  place — • 
then  what  agonies  would  come!  Corydon  would  pass 
through  the  rooms,  suffering  all  the  horrors  which  she 
might  have  suffered  in  years  of  occupancy  of  them. 
And  there  was  no  use  pleading  with  her  to  be  reserved 
in  her  attitude — she  took  houses  in  the  same  way  that 
she  took  people,  either  loving  them  or  hating  them.  So, 
from  an  afternoon's  driving-trip,  she  would  come  home 
in  a  state  of  exhaustion  and  despair ;  and  Thyrsis 
would  have  to  pledge  himself  upon  oath  not  to  think 
of  this  or  that  horrible  place  for  a  single  instant  again. 

There  were  times  when  Thyrsis,  too,  in  spite  of  his 
lack  of  intuition,  felt  the  atmosphere  of  evil  which  hung 
about  some  of  these  old  farms.  Having  lived  for  a 
year  and  a  half  in  the  neighborhood,  and  been  favored 
with  the  gossip  of  the  washerwoman,  and  of  the  farmer's 
wife,  and  of  the  girl  who  came  to  clean  house  now  and 
then,  they  had  come  to  know  the  affairs  of  their  neigh 
bors — they  had  got  a  cross-section  of  an  American 
small-farming  community.  It  was  in  amusing  accord 
with  Thyrsis'  social  theories  that  the  only  two  decent 
families  in  the  neighborhood  inhabited  farms  of  over  a 
hundred  acres.  There  were  several  farms  of  fifty  or 
sixty  acres  occupied  by  tenants,  who  were  engaged  in 
plundering  them  as  fast  as  they  could ;  and  then  a  host 
of  little  places,  of  from  one  to  twenty  acres,  on  which 
families  were  struggling  pitifully  to  keep  alive.  And 
with  scarcely  a  single  exception,  these  homes  of  poverty 
were  also  homes  of  degradation.  Across  the  way  from 
Thyrsis  was  an  idiot  man ;  upon  the  next  place  lived 


566  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

an  old  man  who  was  a  hopeless  drunkard,  and  had  one 
son  insane,  and  another  tubercular ;  and  then  down  in 
the  meadows  below  the  woods  lived  the  Hodges — a  name 
of  direful  portent.  The  father  would  work  as  a  laborer 
in  town  for  a  day  or  two,  and  buy  vinegar  and  make 
himself  half  insane,  and  then  come  home  and  beat  his 
wife  and  children.  There  were  eleven  of  these  latter, 
and  a  new  one  came  each  year ;  the  eldest  were  thieves, 
and  the  youngest  might  be  seen  in  midwinter,  playing 
half-naked  before  the  house.  The  Hodges  were  known 
to  all  the  neighbors  for  miles  about,  and  the  amount  of 
energy  which  each  farmer  expended  in  fighting  them 
would  have  maintained  the  whole  family  in  comfort  for 
their  lives. 

Thyrsis  had  travelled  enough  about  the  New  England 
and  Middle  Atlantic  states  to  know  that  these  conditions 
were  typical  of  the  small-farming  industry  in  all  the 
remoter  parts.  The  people  with  enterprise  had  moved 
West,  and  those  who  stayed  behind  divided  and  mort 
gaged  their  farms,  and  sunk  lower  and  lower  into  misery 
and  degradation.  This  was  one  more  aspect  of  that 
noble  system  of  laissez  faire;  this  was  the  independent 
small-farmer,  whose  happiness  was  the  theme  of  all 
orthodox  economists !  He  was,  according  to  the  news 
paper  editorials,  the  backbone  of  American  civilization ; 
and  once  every  two  years,  in  November,  he  might  be 
counted  upon  to  hitch  up  his  buggy  and  drive  to  town, 
and  pocket  his  two-dollar  bill,  and  roll  up  a  glorious 
majority  for  the  Grand  Old  Party  of  Protection  and 
Prosperity. 

§  10.  THE  date  of  publication  of  the  book  had  come 
at  last.  It  was  being  generously  advertised,  under  the 
imprint  of  a  leading  house ;  and  Thyrsis'  heart  warmed 


THE    PRICE   OF    RANSOM  567 

to  see  the  advertisements.  This  at  last,  he  felt,  was 
success ;  and  then  the  reviews  began  to  come  in,  and  his 
heart  warmed  still  more.  Here  was  a  new  note  in  cur 
rent  fiction,  said  the  critics ;  here  were  power  and  pas 
sion,  a  broad  sweep  and  a  genuine  poetic  impulse. 
American  history  had  never  been  treated  like  this  before, 
American  ideals  had  never  been  voiced  like  this  before. 
And  these,  Thyrsis  noted,  were  the  opinions  of  the  rep 
resentative  reviews — not  those  of  obscure  provincial 
newspapers.  Victory,  it  seemed,  had  come  to  him  at 
last! 

He  came  up  to  the  metropolis  on  the  strength  of  these 
triumphs ;  for  he  had  observed  that  when  one  had.  a  new 
book  coming  out  was  the  psychological  moment  to  at 
tack  the  magazine-editors.  One  was  a  personality  then, 
and  could  command  attention.  It  was  the  height  of  a 
presidential  campaign,  and  the  Socialists  were  making 
an  impression  which  was  astonishing  every  one.  The 
idea  had  occurred  to  Thyrsis  that  some"  magazine  might 
judge  it  worth  while  to  tell  its  readers  about  this  new 
and  picturesque  movement. 

To  his  great  delight  the  editor  of  "Macintyre's 
Monthly"  looked  with  favor  upon  the  suggestion,  and- 
asked  to  see  an  article  at  once.  So  Thyrsis  shut  him 
self  up  in  a  hotel-room  and  wrote  it  over  night.  It 
proved  to  be  so  full  of  "ginger"  that  the  editorial  staff 
of  Macintyre's  was  delighted,  and  made  suggestions  as 
to  another  article ;  at  which  point  Thyrsis  made  a  des 
perate  effort  and  summoned  up  his  courage,  and  in 
sinuated  politely  that  his  stuff  was  worth  five  cents  a 
word.  The  editor-in-chief  replied  promptly  that  that 
seemed  to  him  proper. 

Two  hundred  dollars  for  an  article !    Here  indeed  was 


568  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

fame !  The  author  went  home,  and  thought  out  another 
one,  and  after  a  week  came  up  to  the  city  with  it. 

Tn  this  new  article  Thyrsis  cited  a  presidential  candi 
date  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  and  propounded 
troublesome  questions  to  him.  Here  was  the  capital  of 
the  country,  heaping  itself  up  at  compound  interest, 
and  demanding  dividends ;  here  were  the  people,  scrap 
ing  and  struggling  to  furnish  the  necessary  profits. 
Would  they  always  be  able  to  furnish  enough ;  and  what 
would. happen  when  they  could  no  longer  furnish  them? 
Here  were  franchises  obtained  by  bribery,  and  capi 
talized  for  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars ;  and  these 
millions,  too,  were  heaping  up  automatically.  Were 
they  to  draw  their  interest  and  dividends  forever  ?  Here 
were  the  machines  of  production,  increasing  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  and  the  product  increasing  still  faster,  and 
all  counting  upon  foreign  markets.  What  would  hap 
pen  when  Japan  had  its  own  machines,  and  India  had 
its  own  machines,  and  China  had  its  own  machines? 
Again,  the  processes  of  production  were  being  per 
fected,  and  displacing  men ;  here  were  panics  and  crises, 
displacing  yet  more  men.  Already,  in  England,  a  good 
fourth  of  the  population  had  been  displaced;  and  what 
were  these  displaced  populations  to  do?  They  had 
finished  making  over  the  earth  for  the  capitalists ;  and 
now  that  the  work  was  done,  there  seemed  to  be  no  longer 
any  place  on  the  earth  for  them ! 

Such  were  the  problems  of  our  time,  according  to 
Thyrsis ;  and  why  did  the  statesmen  of  the  time  have 
nothing  to  say  about  them?  When  this  article  had 
been  read  and  discussed,  young  "Billy"  Macintyre  him 
self  sent  for  Thyrsis.  This  was  the  "real  thing",  said 
he,  with  his  genial  bonhomie;  the  five  hundred  thousand 
subscribers  of  Macintyre's  must  surely  have  these  mirth- 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  569 

provoking  meditations.  Also,  the  editors  themselves 
needed  badly  to  be  stirred  up  by  such  live  ideas ;  there 
fore  would  Thyrsis  come  to  dinner  next  Friday  evening, 
and,  as  "Billy"  phrased  it,  "throw  a  little  Socialism  at 
them"? 

§  11.  So  Thyrsis  moved  one  step  higher  yet  up  the 
ladder  of  success.  The  younger  Macintyre  occupied  half 
a  block  of  mansion  up  on  Riverside  Drive — just  across 
the  street  from  the  town-house  of  Barry  Creston's 
father.  Thyrsis  found  himself  in  an  entrance-hall 
where  wonderful  pictures  loomed  vaguely  in  a  dim,  re 
ligious  light ;  and  a  silent  footman  took  his  cap,  and 
then  escorted  him  by  a  soft,  plush-covered  stairway 
to  the  apartments  of  "Billy",  who  was  being  helped 
into  a  dress-suit  by  his  valet.  Thyrsis,  alas,  had  no 
dress-suit,  and  no  valet  to  help  him  into  it,  but  he  sat 
on  the  edge  of  a  big  leather  chair  and  proceeded  to 
"throw  a  little  Socialism"  at  his  host.  Then  they  went 
down  stairs,  and  there  were  Morris  and  Hemingway, 
of  the  editorial  staff,  and  "Buddie"  Comings,  most  pop 
ular  of  novelists,  and  "Bob"  Desmond,  most  famous  of 
illustrators.  And  a  little  later  on  came  Macintyre  the 
elder,  who  had  also  been  judged  to  stand  in  need  of 
some  Socialism.  ~  • 

Macintyre  the  elder  was  white-haired  and  rosy-fljy' 
cheeked.  He  had  begun  life  as  an  emigrant-boy, 
running  errands  for  a  book-shop.  In  course  of  time  he 
had  become  a  partner,  and  then  had  started  a  cheap 
magazine  for  the  printing  of  advertisements.  From 
this  had  come  the  reprinting  of  cheap  books  for  pre 
miums  ;  until  now,  after  forty  years,  Macintyre's  was 
one  of  the  leading  publishing-concerns  of  the  country.. 
Recently  the  important  discovery  had  been  made  that 


570  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  printing  of  half-inch  advertisements  headed  "FITS" 
and  "OBESITY"  prevented  the  securing  of  full-page 
advertisements  about  automobiles.  The  former  kind 
was  therefore  being  diverted  to  the  religious  papers  of 
the  country,  whose  subscribers  were  now  getting  the 
"blood  of  the  lamb"  diluted  with  twenty-five  per  cent, 
alcohol  and  one  and  three-fourths  per  cent,  opium. 
But  such  facts  were  not  allowed  to  interfere  with  the 
optimistic  philosophy  of  "Macintyre's  Monthly". 

The  elder  Macintyre  seemed  to  Thyrsis  the  most 
nai've  and  lovable  old  soul  he  had  encountered  in  many 
a  year.  When  he  espied  Thyrsis,  he  waited  for  no  pre 
liminaries,  but  went  up  to  him  as  he  stood  by  the  fire 
place,  and  put  an  arm  about  him,  and  led  him  off  to  a 
seat  by  the  window.  "I  want  to  talk  to  you,"  said  he. 

"My  boy,"  he  went  on,  "I  read  that  article  of  yours." 

"Which  one?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"The  last  one.  And  you  know,  Billy's  got  to  stop 
putting  things  like  that  in  the  magazine !" 

"What !"  cried  Thyrsis,  alarmed. 

"I  won't  have  it!     He  must  not  print  that  article!" 

"But  he's  accepted  it !" 

"I  know.     But  he  should  have  consulted  me." 

"But — but  I  wrote  it  at  his  order.     And  he  promised 

to  pay  me " 

i'     "Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  the  old  gentleman,  with 
a  genial  smile.     "We'll  pay  for  it,  of  course." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  while  Thyrsis  caught 
his  breath. 

"My  boy,"  continued  the  other,  "that's  a  terrible 
article !" 

"Urn,"  said  the  author— "possibly." 

"Why  do  you  write  such  things?" 

"But  isn't  it  true,  sir?" 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  571 

Mr.  Macintyre  pondered.  "You  know,"  he  said,  "I 
think  you  are  a  very  clever  fellow,  and  you  know  a  lot ; 
much  more  than  I  do,  I've  no  doubt.  But  what  I  don't 
understand  is,  why  don't  you  put  it  into  a  book?" 

"Into  a  book?"  echoed  Thyrsis,  perplexed. 

"Yes,"  explained  the  other — "then  it  won't  hurt  any 
body  but  yourself.  Why  should  you  try  to  get  it  into 
my  magazine,  and  scare  away  my  half-million  sub 
scribers?" 

§  12.  THEY  went  in  to  dinner,  which  was  served  upon 
silver-plate,  by  the  light  of  softly-shaded  candles ;  and 
while  the  velvet-footed  waiters  caused  their  food  to  ap 
pear  and  disappear  by  magic,  Thyrsis  fulfilled  his  mis 
sion  and  "threw  Socialism"  at  the  company. 

The  company  had  its  guns  loaded,  and  they  went 
at  it  hot  and  heavy.  The  editors  wanted  to  know  about 
"the  home"  under  Socialism ;  to  which  Thyrsis  made  re 
tort  by  picturing  "the  home"  under  capitalism.  They 
wanted  to  know  about  liberty  and  individuality  under 
Socialism ;  and  so  Thyrsis  discussed  the  liberty  and 
individuality  of  the  hundred  thousand  wage-slaves  of 
the  Steel  Trust.  They  sought  to  tangle  him  in  discus 
sions  as  to  the  desirability  of  competition,  and  the  im 
possibility  of  escaping  it ;  but  Thyrsis  would  bring  them 
back  again  and  again  to  the  central  fact  of  exploita 
tion,  which  was  the  one  fact  that  counted.  They  in 
sisted  upon  knowing  how  this,  that,  and  the  other  thing 
would  be  done  in  the  Cooperative  Commonwealth ;  to 
which  Thyrsis  answered,  "Do  you  ask  for  a  map  of 
heaven  before  you  join  the  Church?" 

It  was  "Billy"  Macintyre  who  brought  up  a  some 
what  delicate  question ;  how  would  such  an  institution 
as  "Macin tyre's  Monthly"  be  run  under  Socialism? 


572  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Thyrsis  replied  by  quoting  Kautsky's  formula:  "Com 
munism  in  material  production,  Anarchism  in  intellect 
ual".  He  showed  how  the  state  might  print  and  bind 
and  distribute,  while  men  in  "free  associations"  might 
edit  and  publish.  But  one  could  not  get  very  far  in 
this  exposition,  because  of  the  excitement  of  the  elder 
Macintyre.  For  the  old  gentleman  was  like  a  small 
boy  who  is  being  robbed  of  his  marbles ;  if  there  had 
been  a  mob  outside  his  publishing-house,  he  could  not 
have  been  more  agitated.  He  took  occasion  to  state, 
with  the  utmost  solemnity,  that  he  disapproved  of  such 
discussions ;  and  "Billy",  who  sat  between  him  and 
Thyrsis,  had  to  interfere  now  and  then  and  soothe  the 
"pater"  down. 

Mr.  Macintyre's  views  on  the  subject  of  capitalism 
were  simple  and  easy  to  understand.  There  could  be 
nothing  really  wrong  with  a  system  which  had  brought 
so  many  great  and  good  men  into  control  of  the  coun 
try's  affairs.  Mr.  Macintyre  knew  this,  because  he  had 
played  golf  with  them  all  and  gone  yachting  with  them 
all.  And  this  was  a  perfectly  genuine  conviction ;  if 
there  had  been  the  slightest  touch  of  sham  in  it,  the 
old  gentleman  would  have  been  more  cautious  in  the 
examples  he  chose.  He  would  name  man  after  man 
who  was  among  the  most  notorious  of  the  country's 
"malefactors  of  great  wealth" — men  whose  financial 
crimes  had  been  proven  beyond  any  possibility  of  doubt 
ing.  He  would  name  them  in  a  voice  overflowing  with 
affection  and  admiration,  as  benefactors  of  humanity 
upon  a  cosmic  scale ;  and  of  course  that  would  end  the 
argument  in  a  gale  of  laughter.  When  the  elder  Mac 
intyre  entered  the  discussion,  all  the  rest  of  the  com 
pany  moved  forthwith  to  Thyrsis'  side,  and  there  were 
six  Socialists  confronting  one  business-man.  And  this 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  573 

was  a  very  puzzling  and  alarming  thing  to  the  old 
gentleman — his  son  and  his  magazine  were  getting 
away  from  him,  and  he  did  not  know  what  to  make 
of  the  phenomenon ! 

§  13.     THYRSIS  judged  that  the  tidings  must  have 
got  about  that  there  was  a  new  "lion"  in  town ;  for  a 
couple  of  days  after  this  he  was  called  up  by  Comings, 
most    popular    of    novelists,    who    asked    him    to    have 
luncheon    at   the   "Thistle"   club.      And   when    Thyrsis 
went,  Comings  explained  that  Mrs.  Parmley  Patton  had 
read  his  book,  and  was  anxious  to  meet  him,  and  re 
quested  that  he  be  brought  round  to  tea.     The  other 
was  tactless  enough  to  let  it  transpire  that  he  knew 
nothing  about  Mrs.  Patton ;  but  Comings  was  too  tact 
ful  to  show  his  surprise.     Mrs.  Patton,  he  explained, 
was  socially  prominent — was  looked  upon  as  the  leader 
of  a  set  that  went  in  for  intellectual  things.     She  was 
interested  in  social  reform  and  woman's  suffrage,  and 
was  worth  helping  along ;  and  besides  that,  she  was  a  " 
charming  woman — Thyrsis   would   surely  find  the   ad-" 
venture  worth  while.    Then  suddenly,  while  he  was  listen-"" 
ing,  it  flashed  over  Thyrsis  that  he  had  heard  of  Mr  lftl 
Patton    before;    the    lady    was    in    mourning    for    htm» 
brother,  and  Corydon  had  recently  handed  him  a  "so1(* 
ciety"   item,   which   told   of   some   unique   and 
"mourning-hosiery"   which   she   was   introducing 
Paris.  ° 

Thyrsis  in  former  days  might  have  been  shy  of  this 
phenomenon ;  but  at  present  he  was  a  collecting  econo 
mist  on  the  look-out  for  specimens,  and  so  he  said  he 
would  go.  He  met  Comings  again  at  five  o'clock,  and 
they  strolled  out  Fifth  Avenue  together  to  Mrs.  Patton's 
brown-stone  palace.  Thyrsis  observed  that  his  friend 


574  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

had   been    considerate   enough   to    omit   his    afternoon 
change  of  costume,  and  for  this  he  was  grateful. 

Mrs.  Patton  was  still  in  mourning,  a  filmy  and  dia 
phanous  kind  of  mourning,  beautiful  enough  to  placate 
the  angel  Azrael  himself.  A  filmy  and  diaphanous 
creature  was  Mrs.  Patton  also — one  could  never  have 
dreamed  of  so  exquisite  a  black  butterfly.  She  was  very 
sweet  and  sympathetic,  and  told  Thyrsis  how  much  she 
had  liked  his  book — so  that  Thyrsis  concluded  she  was 
not  half  so  bad  as  he  had  expected.  After  all,  she 
might  not  have  been  to  blame  for  the  hosiery  story — it 
might  even  have  been  a  lie.  He  reflected  that  the  yellow 
journals  no  doubt  lied  as  freely  about  young  leaders 
of  intellectual  sets  in  "society"  as  they  did  about  starv 
ing  authors. 

Mrs.  Patton  wanted  to  know  about  Socialism,  and 
sighed  because  it  seemed  so  far  away.  She  made  several 
remarks  that  showed  real  intelligence — and  this  was 
startling  to  Thyrsis,  who  would  as  soon  have  expected 
intelligence  from  a  real  butterfly.  -He  got  a  strange  ini- 
J  )ression  of  a  personality  struggling  to  get  into  con- 
,,act  with  life  from  behind  a  wall  some  ten  million  dol- 
i  rs  high."'  Mrs.  Patton  had  three  young  children,  and 
ex;r  husband  was  one  of  the  "Standard  Oil  crowd" ;  she 
wj)mplained  to  Thyrsis  that  "Parmy" — so  she  referred 
«r>  the  gentleman — was  always  in  terror  over  her 
cagaries. 

•  It  was  a  new  discovery  to  the  author  that  the  very 
rich  might  live  under  the  shadow  of  fear,  quite  as  much 
as  the  very  poor.  Their  wealth  made  them  a  target  for 
newspaper  satire,  so  that  they  dared  not  depart  from 
convention  in  the  slightest  detail.  Mrs.  Patton  told  how 
once  she  had  ventured  to  romp  for  a  few  minutes  with 
some  children  on  the  grounds  of  the  "Casino",  and  the 


THE    PRICE    OF    RANSOM  575 

next  day  all  the  world  had  read  that  she  was  introduc 
ing  "tag"  as  a  diversion  for  the  Newport  colony. 

There  came  other  callers,  both  women  and  men  ;  Percy 
Ambler,  man  of  fashion  and  dilettante  poet ;  and  with 
him  little  Murray  Symington,  who  wrote  the  literary 
chat  for  "Knickerbocker's  Weekly",  and  was  therefore 
a  power  to  be  propitiated.  There  came  Blanchard,  the 
young  and  progressive  publisher  of  the  "Beau  Monde", 
a  weekly  whose  circulation  rivalled  that  of  "Macin- 
tyre's".  There  came  also  young  Macklin,  Mrs.  Patton's 
nephew,  with  his  monocle  and  his  killing  drawl.  Macklin 
came  by  these  honestly,  having  been  brought  up  in 
England;  but  Thyrsis  did  not  know  that — he  only 
heard  the  young  gentleman's  passing  reference  to  his 
yacht,  and  to  his  passion  for  the  poetry  of  Stephane 
Mallarme;  and  so  he  had  it  in  for  Macklin.  Thyrsis 
had  got  involved  in  a  serious  discussion  with  Mrs.  Pat- 
ton  and  Symington,  and  was  in  the  act  of  saying  that 
the  social  problem  could  not  be  much  longer  left  un 
solved  ;  and  then  he  chanced  to  turn,  and  discovered 
young  Macklin,  surveying  him  with  elaborate  super 
ciliousness,  and  asking  with  his  British  drawl,  "Aw— 
I  beg  pawdon — but  what  do  you  mean  by  the  social 
problem?"  And  Thyrsis,  with  a  quick  glance  at  him, 
answered,  "I  mean  you."  So  Macklin  subsided;  and 
Thyrsis  learned  afterwards  that  his  remark  was  going- 
the  rounds,  being  considered  to  be  a  mot.  It  appeared 
the  next  week  in  the  columns  of  a  paper  devoted  to 
"society"  gossip ;  and  many  a  literary  reputation  had 
been  made  by  a  lesser  triumph  than  that. 

Thyrsis  got  new  light  upon  the  making  of  reputa 
tions,  when  he  looked  into  the  next  issue  of  "Knicker 
bocker's  Weekly".  There  he  found  that  Murray  Sym 
ington  had  devoted  no  less  than  three  paragraphs  to 


576  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  personality  and  his  book.  It  was  all  "sprightly" 
— that  was  Murray's  tone — but  also  it  was  cordial; 
and  it  referred  to  Thyrsis'  earlier  novel,  "The  Hearer 
of  Truth",  as  "that  brilliant  piece  of  work".  Thyrsis 
read  this  with  consternation — recalling  that  when  the 
book  had  come  out,  not  two  years  ago,  "Knickerbocker's 
Weekly"  had  referred  to  it  as  a  "preposterous  concoc 
tion".  Could  it  be  true  that  an  author's  work  was 
"preposterous"  while  he  was  starving  in  a  garret,  and 
became  "brilliant"  when  he  was  found  in  the  drawing- 
room  of  Mrs.  "Parmy"  Patton  ? 

§  14.  THYRSIS  went  on  to  penetrate  yet  deeper  into 
these  mysteries ;  there  came  a  call  from  Murray  Sym 
ington,  to  say  that  Mrs.  Jesse  Dyckman  wanted  him  to 
dinner.  Jesse  Dyckman  he  recognized  as  the  name  of 
one  of  the  most  popular  contributors  to  the  magazines 
— his  short  stories  of  Fifth  Avenue  life  were  the  delight 
of  the  readers  of  the  "Beau  Monde". 

"But  I  can't  go  to  dinner-parties  with  women !"  pro 
tested  Thyrsis.  "I  don't  dress  !" 

Murray  took  that  message;  but  in  a  few  minutes  he 
called  up  again.  "She  says  she  doesn't  care  whether 
you  dress  or  not." 

"But  then,  I  don't  eat!"  protested  Thyrsis,  who  had 
recently  discovered  Horace  Fletcher. 

"I  know  that  won't  count,"  said  the  other,  laughing. 
"She  doesn't  want  you  to  eat — she  wants  you  to  talk." 

Mrs.  Jesse  Dyckman  inhabited  an  apartment  in  a 
"studio-building"  not  far  from  Central  Park ;  and  here 
was  more  luxury  and  charm — a  dining-room  done  in 
dark  red,  with  furniture  of  some  black  wood,  and 
candles  and  silver  and  cut  glass,  quite  after  the  fashion 
of  the  Macintyres.  Thyrsis  was  admitted  by  a  French 


THE    PRICE   OF   RANSOM  577 

maid-servant;  and  there  was  Mrs.  Dyckman,  resplend 
ent  in  white  shoulders  and  a  necklace  of  pearls ;  and 
there  was  Dyckman  himself,  even  more  prosperous  and' 
contented-looking  than  his  pictures,  and  even  more  bril 
liant  and  cynical  than  his  tales.  Also  there  was  his 
sister,  Mrs.  Partridge,  the  writer  of  musical  comedies ; 
and  a  Miss  Taylor,  who  filled  the  odd  corners  of  the 
magazines  with  verses,  which  Corydon  had  once  de 
scribed  as  "cheap  cheer-up  stuff". 

So  here  was  the  cream  of  the  "literary  world" ;  and 
Thyrsis,  as  he  watched  and  listened  to  it,  was  working 
out  the  formula  of  magazine  success.  Mrs.  Dyckman 
sat  next  to  him,  displaying  her  shoulders  and  her  cul 
ture  ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  she  must  have  spent  all  her 
spare  time  picking  up  phrases  about  the  books  and 
pictures  and  plays  and  music  of  the  hour,  so  as  to  be 
ready  for  possible  mention  of  them  at  her  dinner-par 
ties.  She  had  opinions  on  tap  about  everything; 
opinions  just  enough  "advanced"  to  be  striking  and 
original,  and  yet  not  too  far  "advanced"  for  good 
form.  Jesse  Dyckman's  short  stories  were  the  sort  in 
which  you  read  how  the  hero  handled  his  cigarette,  and 
were  told  that  the  heroine  was  clad  in  "dimity  en  prin- 
cesse".  You  learned  the  names  of  the  latest  fashion 
able  drinks,  and  the  technicalities  of  automobiles,  and 
met  with  references  to  far-off  ani  intricate  standards 
of  social  excellence. 

To  Thyrsis  it  appeared  that  he  could  see  before  him 
the  whole  career  of  such  a  man.  He  had  trained  him 
self  by  years  of  apprenticeship  in  snobbery;  he  had 
studied  the  fashions  not  only  in  costume  and  manners, 
but  also  in  books  and  opinions.  He  had  been  educated 
in  a  "fraternity",  and  had  chosen  a  wife  who  had  been 
educated  in  a  "sorority" ;  they  had  set  up  in  this  apart- 


578  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ment,  with  silver  service  and  three  French  servants,  and 
proceeded  to  give  dinners,  and  cultivate  people  who 
"counted."  And  so  had  come  the  pleasant  berth  with 
the  "Beau  Monde" ;  one  or  two  stories  every  month,  and 
one  thousand  dollars  for  each  story — as  one  might  read 
in  all  newspaper  accounts  of  the  "earnings  of  authors". 

The  "Beau  Monde"  might  have  been  described  as  a 
magazine  for  the  standardizing  of  the  newly-rich.  A 
group  of  these  existed  in  every  town  in  the  country, 
and  had  their  "society"  in  every  little  city.  They 
would  come  to  New  York  and  put  up  at  expensive 
hotels,  and  get  their  education  in  theatres  and  opera- 
houses  and  "lobster-palaces" ;  in  addition  they  had  this 
weekly  messenger  of  good  form.  In  its  advertising- 
columns  one  read  of  the  latest  things  in  cigarettes  and 
highballs  and  haberdashery  and  candies  and  autos ; 
and  in  its  reading-matter  one  found  the  leisure-class 
world,  and  the  leisure-class  idea  of  all  other  worlds. 
Young  Blanchard  himself  was  in  the  most  "exclusive" 
society ;  and  if  one  stayed  close  to  him,  one  might 
worm  his  way  past  the  warders.  Among  the  regular 
contributors  to  the  "Beau  Monde"  and  to  "Macin- 
tyre's",  there  were  a  dozen  men  who  had  risen  by  this 
method ;  and  some  of  them  had  been  real  writers  at  the 
outset — had  started  with  a  fund  of  vigor,  at  least.  But 
now  they  spent  their  evenings  at  dinner-parties,  and 
their  days  lounging  about  in  two  or  three  expensive 
cafes,  reading  the  afternoon  papers,  exchanging  gossip, 
and  acquiring  the  necessary  stock  of  cynicism  for  their 
next  picture  of  leisure-class  life. 

It  was  what  might  have  been  described  as  the  "court 
method"  of  literary  achievement.  The  centre  of  it  was 
the  young  prince  who  held  the  purse-strings ;  and  the 
court  was  a  coterie  of  bookish  men  of  fashion  and  rich 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  579 

women  whose  husbands  were  occupied  in  the  stock-mar 
ket.  They  set  the  tone  and  dispensed  the  favors ;  one 
who  stood  in  their  good  graces  would  be  practically  im 
mune  to  criticism,  no  matter  how  seedy  his  work  might 
come  to  be.  Nobody  liked  to  "roast"  a  man  with  whom 
he  had  played  golf  at  a  week-end  party ;  and  who  could 
be  so  impolite  as  to  slight  the  work  of  a  lady-poetess 
whom  he  had  taken  in  to  dinner? 

§  15.  THYRSIS  studied  these  people,  and  measured 
himself  against  them.  He  was  not  blinded  by  any 
vanity;  he  knew  that  it  would  not  have  taken  him  a 
week  to  turn  out  a  short  story  which  would  have  had 
the  requisite  qualities  for  Macintyre's — which  would 
have  been  clever  and  entertaining,  would  have  had  gen 
uine  sentiment,  and  as  large  a  proportion  of  sincerity 
as  the  magazine  admitted.  He  could  have  suggested 
that  he  thought  it  was  worth  five  hundred  dollars,  and 
"Billy"  Macintyre  would  have  nodded  and  sent  him  a 
check.  And  then  he  could  have  moved  up  to  town,  and 
got  a  frock-coat,  and  paid  another  call  upon  Mrs. 
"Parmy"  Patton.  Then  his  friend  Comings  would  have 
put  him  up  for  the  "Thistle",  he  would  have  got  to 
know  the  men  who  made  literary  opinion,  and  so  his 
career  would  have  been  secure. 

Nor  need  he  have  made  any  apparent  break  with  his 
convictions.  In  "society"  one  met  all  sorts  of  eccen 
trics — "babus"  and  "yogis",  Christian  Scientists,  spirit 
ualists  and  theosophists,  Fletcherites,  vegetarians  and 
"raw-fooders".  And  there  would  be  ample  room  for  his 
fad — it  was  quite  "English"  to  be  touched  with  So 
cialism.  All  that  one  had  to  do  was  to  be  entertaining 
in  one's  presentation  of  it,  and  to  confine  one's  self  to 


580  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

its  literary  aspects — not  setting  forth  plans  for  the  ex 
propriation  of  the  house  of  Macintyre ! 

Thyrsis  had  one  grievous  handicap,  of  course.  He 
would  have  had  to  keep  his  wife  and  child  in  the  back 
ground;  for  Corydon,  alas,  would  not  have  scored  as  a 
giver  of  dinner-parties.  From  a  woman  like  Mrs.  Jesse 
Dyckman,  skilled  in  intellectual  fence,  and  merciless  to 
her  inferiors,  Corydon  would  have  turned  tail  and  fled. 
Thyrsis  was  able  to  sit  by  and  let  Mrs.  Dyckman  wave 
the  plumes  of  her  wit  and  spread  the  tail-feathers  of  her 
culture  before  his  astonished  eyes,  and  at  the  same  time 
occupy  his  mind  with  studying  her,  and  working  out 
her  "economic  interpretation".  But  Corydon  took  life 
too  intensely,  and  people  too  personally  for  that. 

But  she  would  have  let  him  go,  if  he  had  told  her  that 
it  was  best.  So  why  should  he  not  do  it — why  should 
he  turn  his  back  upon  this  opportunity,  and  return 
to  the  "soap-box  in  a  marsh"  to  wrestle  with  loneliness 
and  want?  The  fact  of  the  matter  was  that  the  thing 
which  seemed  so  easy  to  his  intellect,  was  impossible  to 
his  character.  Thyrsis  could  not  have  anything  to  do 
with  these  people  without  hypocrisy ;  merely  to  sit  and 
talk  pleasantly  with  them  was  to  lie.  They  were  to  him 
the  enemy,  the  thing  he  was  in  life  to  fight.  And  he 
hated  all  that  they  stood  for  in  the  world — he  hated 
their  ideas  and  their  institutions,  their  virtues  as  well 
as  their  vices. 

He  had  been  down  into  the  bottom-most  pit  of 
hell,  and  the  sights  that  he  had  seen  there  had  withered 
him  up.  How  could  he  derive  enjoyment  from  silks  and 
jewels,  from  rich  foods  and  fine  wines,  when  he  heard 
in  his  ears  the  cries  of  agony  of  the  millions  he  had 
left  behind  him  in  that  seething  abyss?  And  should 
he  trample  upon  their  faces,  as  so  many  others  had 


THE    PRICE    OF   RANSOM  581 

trampled?     Should  he  make  a  ladder  of  their  murdered 
hopes,  to  climb  out  to  fame  and  fortune?     Not  he! 

It  seemed  to  him  sometimes,  as  he  thought  about  it, 
that  he  alone,  of  all  men  living,  had  power  to  voice  the 
despair  of  these  tortured  souls.  Others  had  been  down 
into  that  pit,  and  had  come  out  alive ;  but  who  was  there 
among  them  that  was  an  artist;  that  could  forge  his 
hatred  into  a  weapon,  sharp  enough  and  stout  enough 
to  be  driven  through  the  tough  hide  of  the  world  of 
culture?  To  be  an  artist  meant  to  have  spent  years  and 
decades  in  toil  and  study,  in  disciplining  and  drilling 
one's  powers ;  and  who  was  there  that  had  descended 
into  the  social  inferno,  and  had  come  back  with  strength 
enough  to  accomplish  that  labor? 

So  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  the  bearer  of  a  gos 
pel,  that  he  had  to  teach  the  world  something  it  could 
otherwise  not  know.  He  had  tried  out  upon  his  own 
person,  and  upon  the  persons  of  his  loved  ones,  the 
effects  of  poverty  and  destitution,  of  cold  and  hunger, 
of  solitude  and  sickness  and  despair.  And  so  he  knew, 
of  his  own  knowledge,  the  meaning  of  the  degradation 
that  he  saw  in  modern  society — of  suicide  and  insanity,, 
of  drunkenness  and  vice  and  crime,  of  physical  and 
mental  and  moral  decay.  He  knew,  and  none  could  dis 
pute  him!  Therefore  he  must  nerve  himself  for  the 
struggle ;  he  must  deliver  that  message,  and  pound  home 
that  truth.  He  must  keep  on  and  on — in  defiance  of 
authority,  in  the  face  of  all  the  obloquy  and  ridicule 
that  the  prostitute  powers  of  civilization  could  heap 
upon  him.  He  must  live  for  that  work,  and  die  for  it — 
to  make  real  to  the  thinking  world  the  infamies  and  the 
horrors  of  the  capitalist  regime. 


BOOK  XV 
THE  CAPTIVE  FAINTS 


"Too  quick  despair er,  wherefore  wilt  thou  go? 
Soon  will  the  high  Midsummer  pomps  come  on." 

"Do  you  remember  how  you  used  to  tell  me  that?" 
she  whispered.  "Hoping — always  hoping!" 

"And  always  young!"  he  added. 

"How  did  I  keep  so?"  she  said,  with  wonder  m  her 
voice;  and  he  read — 

"Thou  hearest  the  immortal  chants'  of  old!— 
Putting  his  sickle  to  the  perilous  gram 

In  the  hot  corn-field  of  the  Phrygian  king, 
For  thee  the  Lityerses-song  again 

Young  Daphnis  with  his  silver  voice  doth  sing!" 

Then  a  smile  of  mischief  crossed  her  facet  and  she 
asked,  "Which  Daphnis?" 


§  1.  THYRSIS  came  back  to  his  home  in  the  country, 
divided  between  satisfaction  over  the  four  hundred 
dollars  worth  of  booty  he  had  captured,  and  a  great 
uneasiness  concerning  his  novel.  It  had  had  with  the 
critics  all  the  success  that  he  could  have  asked,  but 
unfortunately  it  did  not  seem  to  be  selling.  Already 
it  had  been  out  three  weeks,  and  the  sales  had  been  only 
a  thousand  copies.  The  publisher  confessed  himself  dis 
appointed,  but  said  that  it  was  too  early  to  be  certain ; 
they  must  allow  time  for  the  book  to  make  its  way,  for 
the*  opinions  of  the  reviews  to  take  effect. 

And  so,  for  week  after  week,  Thyrsis  watched  and 
hoped  against  hope — the  old,  heart-sickening  experi 
ence.  In  the  end  he  came  to  realize  that  he  had  achieved 
that  most  cruel  of  all  literary  ironies,  the  succes 
d'estime.  The  critics  agreed  that  he  had  written  a 
most  unusual  book;  but  then,  the  critics  did  not  really 
count — they  had  no  way  of  making  their  verdict  ef 
fective.  What  determined  success  or  failure  was  the 
department-store  public.  It  would  take  a  whim  for  a 
certain  novel;  and  when  a  novel  had  once  begun  to 
sell,  it  would  be  advertised  and  pushed  to  the  front, 
and  everything  else  would  give  way  before  it,  quite  re 
gardless  of  what  the  critics  had  said.  A  book-review 
appeared  only  once,  but  an  advertisement  might  ap 
pear  a  score  of  times,  and  be  read  all  over  the  country. 
So  the  public  would  have  pounded  into  its  consciousness 
the  statement  that  "Hearts  Aflame",  by  Dorothy 
Dimple,  was  a  masterpiece  of  character-drawing,  full 

585 


586  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  thrilling  incident  and  alive  with  pulsing  passion. 
The  department-store  public,  which  was  not  intelligent 
enough  to  distinguish  between  a  criticism  and  an  ad 
vertisement,  would  accept  all  these  opinions  at  their 
face-value.  And  that  was  success ;  even  the  critics 
bowed  to  it  in  the  end — as  you  might  note  by  the  change 
in  their  tone  when  they  came  to  review  the  next  work 
by  this  "popular"  novelist. 

So  Thyrsis  faced  the  ghastly  truth  that  another  year 
and  a  half  of  toiling  and  waiting  had  gone  for  nothing 
— the  heights  of  opportunity  were  almost  as  far  away 
as  ever.  He  had  to  summon  up  his  courage  and  nerve 
himself  for  yet  another  climb ;  and  Corydon  would  have 
to  face  the  prospect  of  another  winter  in  the  "soap 
box  in  a  marsh". 

It  -was  now  November,  and  Thyrsis  had  written  noth 
ing  but  Socialist  manifestoes  for  six  months.  He  was 
restless  and  chafing  again ;  but  living  in  distress  as  they 
were,  he  could  not  get  his  thoughts  together  at  all. 
He  must  have  been  a  trying  person  to  live  in  the  house 
with  at  such  a  time.  "You  ask  me  to  take  love  for 
granted,"  said  Corydon  to  him  once;  "but  how  can  I, 
when  your  every  expression  is  contradictory  to  love?" 

How  could  he  explain  to  her  his  trouble  ?  Here  again 
was  the  pressure  of  that  dreadful  "economic  screw",  that 
was  crushing  their  love,  and  all  beauty  and  joy  and 
hope  in  their  hearts.  They  might  fight  against  it  with 
all  the  power  of  their  beings ;  they  might  fall  down 
upon  their  knees  together,  and  pledge  themselves  with 
anguish  in  their  voices  and  tears  in  their  eyes ;  but  still 
the  remorseless  pressure  would  go  on,  day  and  night, 
week  after  week,  without  a  moment's  respite. 

There  was  this  little  house,  for  instance.  It  was  all 
that  Thyrsis  wanted,  and  all  that  he  would  ever  have 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  587 

wanted;  and  yet  he  could  not  be  happy  in  it,  because 
Cory  don  was  not  happy  in  it.  He  must  be  plotting  and 
planning  and  worrying,  straining  every  nerve  to  get  to 
another  house;  he  might  not  even  think  of  any  other 
possibility — that  would  be  treason  to  her.  So  always 
it  seemed — he  had  to  turn  his  face  a  way  that  he  did 
not  wish  to  travel,  he  had  to  go  on  against  every  in 
stinct  of  his  own  nature.  His  love  for  Corydon  was 
such  that  he  would  be  ashamed  whenever  his  own  in 
stincts  showed  themselves.  But  then  he  would  go  alone, 
and  try  to  do  his  work,  and  then  discover  the  havoc  this 
had  wrought  in  his  own  being. 

Just  now  the  tension  had  reached  the  breaking  point ; 
the  craving  for  solitude  and  peace  was  eating  him  up. 

"What  is  it  that  you  want?"  asked  Corydon,  one 
day. 

"I  want  to  be  where  I  don't  have  to  see  anybody,"  he 
cried.  "I  want  to  rough  it  in  a  tent,  as  I  did  once  be 
fore." 

"But  it's  too  late  to  go  to  the  Adirondacks,  Thyrsis !" 

"I  know  that,"  he  said.    "But  there  are  other  places." 

He  had  heard  of  one  in  Virginia — in  that  very  Wil 
derness  of  which  he  had  written  so  eloquently,  but  had 
never  seen.  "Isn't  there  some  one  who  could  come  and 
stay  with  you?"  he  pleaded. 

"I  don't  know,"  replied  Corydon.  But  the  next 
day,  as  fate  would  have  it,  there  came  a  letter  from 
Delia  Gordon,  saying  that  she  had  finished  a  certain 
stage  of  her  study-course,  and  was  tired  out  and  in 
fear  of  break-down.  So  an  invitation  was  sent  and  ac 
cepted,  and  Thyrsis  secured  the  respite  which  he  craved. 

And  so  behold  him  as  a  hermit  once  more,  settled  in 
a  deserted  cabin  not  far  from  the  battle-field  of  Spot- 
sylvania.  He  had  got  rid  of  the  vermin  in  the  cabin 


588  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

by  burning  sulphur,  and  had  stocked  his  establishment 
with  a  canvas-cot  and  a  camp-stool  and  a  lamp  and  an 
oil-can,  and  the  usual  supply  of  beans  and  bacon  and 
rice  and  corn-meal  and  prunes.  Also  he  had  built  him 
self  a  rustic  table,  and  unpacked  a  trunkful  of  blankets 
and  dishes  and  writing-pads  and  books.  So  once  more 
his  life  was  his  own,  and  a  thing  of  delight  to  him. 

He  had  promised  himself  to  live  off  the  country,  as 
he  had  before ;  but  the  principal  game  here  was  the 
wild  turkey,  and  the  wild  turkey  proved  itself  a  shy 
and  elusive  bird.  It  was  not  occupied  with  meditations 
concerning  literary  masterpieces ;  and  so  it  had  a  great 
advantage  over  Thyrsis,  who  would  forget  that  he  had 
a  gun  with  him  after  the  first  half-hour  of  a  "hunt". 

§  2.  IT  had  now  become  clear  to  Thyrsis  that  he 
had  nothing  more  to  expect  from  his  novel ;  it  had  sold 
less  than  two  thousand  copies,  which  meant  that  it  had 
not  earned  the  money  which  had  already  been  advanced 
to  him.  But  all  that  was  now  ancient  history — the  en 
trenchments  and  graveyards  of  the  Wilderness  battle 
field  were  not  more  forgotten  and  overgrown  with  new 
life  than  was  the  war-book  in  Thyrsis'  mind.  He  had 
had  enough  of  being  a  national  chronicler  which  the 
nation  did  not  want ;  he  had  come  down  to  the  realities 
of  the  hour,  to  the  blazing  protest  of  the  new  Revolu 
tion. 

For  ten  years  now  Thyrsis  had  been  playing  at  the 
game  of  professional  authorship;  he  had  studied  the 
literary  world  both  high  and  low,  and  had  seen  enough 
to  convince  him  that  it  was  an  impossible  thing  to  pro 
duce  art  in  such  a  society.  The  modern  world  did  not 
know  what  art  was,  it  was  incapable  of  forming  such 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  589 

a  concept.  That  which  it  called  "art"  was  fraud  and 
parasitism — its  very  heart  was  diseased. 

For  the  essence  of  art  was  unselfishness ;  it  was  an 
emotion  which  overflowed,  and  which  sought  to  com 
municate  itself  to  others  from  an  impulse  of  pure  joy. 
It  was  of  necessity  a  social  thing ;  the  supreme  art- 
products  of  the  race  had  been,  like  the  Greek  tragedy 
and  the  Gothic  cathedral,  a  result  of  the  labor  of  a 
whole  community.  And  what  could  the  modern  man, 
a  solitary  and  predatory  wolf  in  the  wilderness  of 
laissez  faire — what  could  he  conceive  of  such  a  state 
of  soul?  What  would  happen  to  a  man  who  gave  him 
self  up  to  such  a  state  of  soul,  in  a  community  where 
the  wolf-law  and  the  wolf-customs  prevailed? 

A  grim  purpose  had  been  forming  itself  in  Thyrsis' 
mind.  He  would  suppress  the  artist  in  himself  for  the 
present — he  would  do  it,  cost  whatever  agony  it  might. 
He  would  turn  propagandist  for  a  while;  instead  of 
scattering  his  precious  seed  in  barren  soil,  he  would  set 
to  work  to  make  the  soil  ready.  There  was  seething  in 
his  mind  a  work  of  revolutionary  criticism,  which  would 
sweep  into  the  rubbish-heap  the  idols  of  the  leisure- 
class  world. 

It  was  his  idea  to  go  back  to  first  principles  ;  to  study 
the  bases  of  modern  society,  and  show  how  its  customs 
and  institutions  came  to  be,  and  interpret  its  art  as  a 
product  of  these.  He  would  show  what  the  modern 
artist  was,  and  how  he  got  his  living,  and  how  this 
moulded  his  work.  He  would  take  the  previous  art- 
periods  of  history  and  study  them,  showing  by  what 
stages  the  artist  had  evolved,  and  so  gaining  a  stand 
point  from  which  to  prophesy  what  he  would  come  to  be 
in  the  future.  Only  once  had  an  attempt  ever  been 
made  to  apply  to  questions  of  art  the  methods  of 


590  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

science — in  Nordau's  "Degeneration".  But  then  Nor- 
dau's  had  been  pseudo-science — three-quarters  imperti 
nence  and  conceit.  The  world  still  waited  to  understand 
its  art-products  in  the  light  of  scientific  Socialism. 

Such  was  the  task  which  Thyrsis  was  planning.  It 
would  mean  years  of  study,  and  how  he  was  to  get  the 
means  to  do  it,  he  could  not  guess.  But  he  had  his 
mind  made  up  to  do  it,  though  it  might  be  the  last 
of  his  labors,  though  everything  else  in  his  life  might 
end  in  shipwreck.  He  went  about  all  day,  possessed 
with  the  idea ;  it  would  be  a  colossal  work,  an  epoch- 
making  work — it  would  be  the  culmination  of  his  ef 
forts  .and  the  vindication  of  his  claims.  It  would 
save  the  men  who  came  after  him ;  and  to  save  the  men 
who  came  after  him  had  now  become  the  formula  of 
his  life. 

§  3.  THYRSIS  would  come  back  from  a  sojourn  such 
as  this  with  all  his  impulses  of  affection  and  sympathy 
renewed ;  he  would  have  had  time  to  miss  Cory  don,  and 
to  realize  how  closely  he  was  bound  to  her.  He  would 
be  eager  to  tell  her  all  his  adventures,  and  the  wonder 
ful  plans  which  he  had  formed. 

But  this  time  it  was  Corydon  who  had  adventures 
to  narrate.  He  realized  as  soon  as  he  saw  her  that  she 
had  something  upon  her  mind ;  and  at  the  first  occasion 
she  led  him  off  to  his  own  study,  and  shut  the  door.  He 
got  a  fire  going,  and  she  sat  opposite  him  and  gazed 
at  him. 

"Thyrsis,"  she  said,  "I  hardly  know  how  to  begin." 

It  was  all  very  formal  and  mysterious.  "What  is  it, 
dear?"  he  asked. 

"It's  something  terrible,"  she  whispered.  "I'm  afraid 
you're  going  to  be  angry." 


THE   CAPTIVE   FAINTS  591 

"What  is  it?"  he  repeated,  more  anxiously. 

"I  was  angry  myself,  at  first,"  she  said ;  "but  I've 
got  over  it  now.  And  I  want  you  please  to  be  reason 
able." 

"Go  on,  dear." 

"Thyrsis,"  she  whispered,  after  a  pause,  "it's 
Harry." 

"Harry?" 

"Harry  Stuart,  you  know." 

"Oh,"  said  he.  He  had  all  but  forgotten  the  young 
drawing-teacher,  whom  he  had  left  doing  Socialist  car 
toons. 

"Well?"  he  inquired. 

"You  see,  Thyrsis,  I  always  liked  him  very  much. 
And  he's  been  coming  up  here — quite  a  good  deal.  I 
didn't  see  why  he  shouldn't  come — Delia  liked  him  too, 
and  she  was  with  us  most  of  the  time.  Was  it  wrong 
of  me  to  let  him  come?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  he.     "Tell  me." 

"Perhaps  it's  silly  of  me,"  Corydon  continued,  hesi 
tatingly — "but  I'm  always  imagining  things  about 
people.  And  he  seemed  to  me  to  have  such  possibilities. 
He  has — how  shall  I  say  it 

"I  recall  your  saying  he  had  soulful  eyes,"  put  in 
Thyrsis. 

"You'll  make  fun  of  it  all,  of  course,"  said  Cory 
don.  "But  it's  really  very  tragic.  You  see,  he's  never 
met  a  woman  like  me  before." 

"I  can  believe  that,  my  dear." 

"I  mean — a  woman  that  has  any  real  ideas.  He 
would  ask  me  questions  by  the  hour ;  and  we  talked  about 
everything.  So,  of  course,  we  talked  about  love;  and 
he — he  asked  if  I  was  happy." 


592  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"I  see,"  said  Thyrsis,  grimly.  "Of  course  you  said 
that  you  were  miserable." 

"I  didn't  say  much.  I  told  him  that  your  work  was 
hard,  and  that  my  courage  wasn't  always  equal  to  my 
task.  Anyone  can  see  that  I  have  suffered." 

"Yes,  dear,"  said  Thyrsis,  "of  course.    Go  on." 

"Well,  one  day — it  was  last  Friday — he  came  up  with , 
a  carriage  to  take  us  driving.  And  Delia  had  a  head 
ache,  and  wanted  to  rest,  and  so  Harry  and  I  went 
alone.  I — I  guess  I  shouldn't  have  gone,  but  I  didn't 
realize  it.  It  was  a  beautiful  afternoon,  and  we  both 
had  a  good  time — in  fact,  I  don't  know  when  I  have 
been  so  contentedly  happy.  We  stopped  to  gather  wild 
flowers,  and  once  we  sat  by  a  little  stream;  and  of 
course,  we  talked  and  talked,  and  before  I  realized  it, 
twilight  was  falling,  and  we  were  a  long  way  from 
home." 

"Go  on,"  said  Thyrsis,  as  she  hesitated. 

"We  sta.-ted  out.  I  recollected  later,  though  I  didn't 
seem  to  notice  it  at  the  time — that  Harry's  voice  seemed 
to  grow  husky,  and  he  spoke  indistinctly.  He  had  let 
the  horse  have  the  reins,  and  his  arm  was  on  the  back 
of  my  seat.  I  hadn't  noticed  it ;  but  then — then — fancy 
my  horror " 

"Well?" 

"It  happened — all  of  a  sudden."  Corydon  stam 
mered,  her  cheeks  turning  scarlet.  "I  felt  his  arm 
clasp  me ;  and  I  turned  and  stared,  and  his  face  was 
close  to  mine,  and  his  eyes  were  fairly  shining." 

There  was  a  pause.  "What  did  you  do?"  asked 
the  other. 

"I  just  looked  at  him  calmly,  and  said,  'Oh,  how 
could  you?'  And  at  that  he  took  his  arm  away  quickly, 
and  sat  up  stiff  and  straight,  with  a  terribly  hurt  ex- 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  598 

pression.  'Forgive  me,'  he  said.  'I  was  mad.'  And 
we  neither  of  us  spoke  a  word  all  the  way  home.  And 
when  we  came  to  the  house,  I  jumped  out  of  the  car 
riage  without  saying  good-night." 

Corydon  sat  staring  at  her  husband,  with  her  wide- 
open, -anxious  eyes.  "And  was  that  all?"  he  asked. 

"To-day  I  had  a  letter  from  him.  He  said  he  was 
going  away,  over  the  Christmas  holidays.  He  said 
that  he  was  very  much  ashamed  of  himself,  and  he 
hoped  that  I  would  be  able  to  forgive  him.  And  that's 
all." 

They  sat  for  a  while  in  silence.  "You  won't  be  too 
angry?"  asked  Corydon,  anxiously. 

"I'm  not  angry  at  all,"  he  said.  "But  naturally  it's 
disturbing.  I  don't  like  to  have  such  things  happen 
to  you." 

"It's  strange,  you  know,"  said  Corydon,  "but  I 
haven't  seemed  to  stay  very  indignant.  He  was  so  hurt, 
you  know — and  I  can  realize  how  unhappy  he's  been. 
Curiously  enough,  I've  even  found  myself  thinking  that 
I'd  like  to  see  him  again.  And  that  puzzled  me.  I  felt 
that  I  ought  to  be  quite  outraged.  That  he  should 
imagine  he  could  hug  me — like  any  shop-girl !" 

They  spent  many  hours  discussing  this  adventure;  in 
fact  it  was  a  week  or  two  before  they  had  disposed  of 
it  entirely.  Thyrsis  was  hoping  that  the  experience 
might  be  utilized  to  persuade  Corydon  to  modify  her 
Utopian  attitude  towards  young  men  with  soulful  eyes 
and  waving  brown  hair.  He  was  at  some  pains  to 
set  forth  to  her  the  psychology  of  the  male  creature — 
insisting  that  he  knew  more  about  this  than  she  did,  and 
that  his  remarks  applied  to  drawing-teachers  as  well 
as  to  all  other  arts  and  professions. 

The  main  question,  of  course,  was  as  to  their  atti- 


594  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

tude  towards  Harry  Stuart  when  he  returned.  Cory- 
don,  it  became  clear,  had  forgiven  him ;  the  phraseology 
of  his  letter  was  touching,  and  he  was  now  invested  in 
the  glamor  of  penitence.  She  insisted  that  the  episode 
might  be  overlooked,  and  that  their  friendship  could  go 
on  as  before.  But  Thyrsis  argued  vigorously  that  their 
relationship  could  never  be  the  same  again,  and  declared 
that  they  ought  not  to  meet. 

"But  then,"  Corydon  protested,  "he'll  be  at  the  Jen 
nings  !  And  I  can't  snub  him !" 

"What  does  Delia  think  about  it?"  he  asked. 

"Dear  me!"  Corydon  exclaimed.  "I  haven't  told 
Delia  a  word  of  it !" 

"Haven't  told  her!     But  why  not?" 

"Because  she'd  be  horrified.  She'd  never  speak  to 
Harry  Stuart  again!" 

"But  then  you  want  me  to  speak  to  him!  And  even 
to  be  cordial  to  him  !  You  want  to  go  ahead  and  carry 
on  a  sentimental  flirtation  with  him " 

"Oh,  Thyrsis !"  she  protested. 

"But  that's  what  it  would  come  to.  And  how  much 
peace  of  mind  do  you  suppose  I'd  have,  while  I  knew 
that  was  going  on?" 

At  which  Corydon  sighed  pathetically.  ""I'm  a  fine 
sort  of  emancipated  woman!"  she  said.  "Don't  you 
see  you're  playing  the  role  of  the  conventional  jealous 
husband?" 

But  as  she  thought  over  the  matter  in  the  privacy 
of  her  own  mind  she  was  filled  with  perplexity,  and 
wondered  at  herself.  She  found  herself  actually  long 
ing  to  see  Harry  Stuart.  She  asked  herself,  "Can  it 
really  be  I,  Corydon,  who  am  capable  of  being  interested 
in  any  other  man  besides  my  husband?"  She  could  not 
bring  herself  to  face  the  fact  that  it  was  true. 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  595 

§  4.  THYRSIS  went  away,  and  took  to  wandering 
about  the  country,  wrestling  with  his  new  book.  After 
the  fashion  of  every  work  that  came  to  possess  him,  it 
seemed  to  possess  him  as  no  other  work  had  ever  done 
before.  His  mind  was  in  a  turmoil  with  it,  his  thoughts 
racing  from  one  part  to  another ;  he  would  stop  in  the 
midst  of  pumping  a  bucket  of  water  or  bringing  in  a 
supply  of  wood,  to  jot  down  some  notes  that  came  to 
him.  Each  day  he  realized  more  fully  the  nature  of  the 
task.  Seated  alone  at  night  in  his  tiny  cabin,  his  spirit 
would  cry  out  in  terror  at  the  burden  that  had  been 
heaped  upon  it. 

He  had  decided  upon  the  title  of  the  book — "Art 
and  Money:  an  Essay  in  the  Economic  Interpretation 
of  Literature".  And  then,  late  one  night,  as  he  was 
pondering  it,  there  had  flashed  over  him  the  form  into 
which  he  should  cast  the  work;  he  would  make  it,  not 
only  an  exposition  of  his  philosophy,  but  the  story  of 
his  life,  the  cry  of  his  soul.  There  had  come  to  him 
an  introductory  statement ;  it  was  a  smashing  thing — 
a  thing  that  would  arrest  and  stun !  Disraeli  had  said 
that  a  critic  was  a  man  who  had  failed  as  a  creative 
writer ;  and  Thyrsis  would  take  that  taunt  and  make  it 
into  his  battle-cry.  "I  who  write  this,"  he  would  say — 
"I  am  a  failure ;  I  am  a  murdered  artist !  I  sit  by  the 
corpse  of  my  dead  dreams,  I  dip  my  pen  into  the  heart's 
blood  of  my  strangled  vision !"  So  he  would  indict  the 
forces  that  had  murdered  him,  and  through  the  rest  of 
the  book  he  would  pursue  them — he  would  track  them 
to  their  lair  and  corner  them,  and  slay  them  with  a 
sharp  sword. 

Meantime  Delia  Gordon  had  gone  back  to  her  studies, 
and  Corydon  had  settled  down  to  her  lonely  task.  She 
washed  and  dressed  and  fed  the  baby,  and  satisfied 


596  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

what  she  could  of  his  insatiable  demands  for  play. 
Thyrsis  would  come  and  help  to  get  the  meals  and 
wash  the  dishes ;  but  even  then  he  was  poor  company — 
he  was  either  tired  out,  or  lost  in  thought,  and  his 
nerves  were  in  such  a  state  that  he  could  not  bear  to 
be  criticized.  It  was  getting  to  be  harder  for  him  to 
endure  the  strain  of  hearing  complaints ;  and  so  Cory- 
don  shrunk  more  and  more  into  herself,  and  took  to 
pouring  out  her  soul  in  long  letters  and  journals. 

"Is  it  possible,"  she  wrote  to  Delia,  "that  to  some 
people  life  is  a  continuous  expiation — an  expiation  of 
submerged  hereditary  sins,  as  well  as  of  conscious  ones? 
A  great  deal  of  the  time  life  seems  to  me  a  hopeless 
puzzle;  I  am  so  utterly  unfitted  for  the  roles  I  labor 
to  play.  Is  it  that  I  am  too  low  for  my  environment? 
Or  can  it  be  that  I  am  too  high?  Surely  there  must 
some  day  be  other  things  that  women  can  do  in  the 
world  besides  training  children.  I  try.  to  love  my  task, 
but  I  have  no  talent  for  it,  and  it  is  a  frightful  strain 
upon  me.  'After  one  hour  of  blocks  and  choo-choo  cars, 
I  am  perfectly  prostrated.  I  have  been  cheated  out  of 
the  joys  of  motherhood,  that  is  the  truth — the  spring 
was  poisoned  for  me  at  the  very  beginning. 

"You  must  not  mind  my  lamentations,  dear  Delia," 
she  wrote  in  another  letter.  "You  can't  imagine  how 
lonely  my  life  is — no,  for  it  is  different  when  you  are 
here.  Oh,  I  am  so  weary !  so  weary !  It  didn't  use  to 
be  like  this.  Every  moment  of  leisure  I  had  I  would 
run  and  try  to  study ;  I  would  read  something — I  was 
always  eager  and  hungry.  But  now  I  am  dull — I  do 
not  follow  my  inspirations.  If  only  Thyrsis  and  I  might 
sometimes  read  together !  I  love  to  be  read  to,  but  he 
cannot  bear  it — he  reads  three  times  as  fast  to  himself, 
he  says.  He  will  do  it  if  I  am  sick ;  but  even  then  it 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  597 

makes  him  nervous,  and  I  cannot  help  but  know  that, 
however  he  tries  to  hide  it.  It  is  one  of  our  troubles, 
but  we  know  each  other's  states  of  mind  intuitively. 

"Oh,  Delia,  was  there  ever  a  tragedy  in  the  world 
like  that  of  our  love?  (Almost  everything  in  our  lives 
is  pain,  and  so  we  are  coming  to  stand  for  pain  to  each 
other!)  I  ask  myself  sometimes  if  any  two  people  who 
love  could  stand  what  we  have  to  stand.  Sometimes  I 
think  they  could,  if  their  love  was  different ;  but  then 
that  thought  breaks  my  heart !  Why  cannot  our  love  be 
different,  I  ask! 

"I  had  one  of  my  frightful  fits  of  unhappiness  to-day. 
It  was  nothing — it  was  my  fault,  I  guess.  I  am  very 
sensitive.  But  I  think  it  is  a  tendency  of  Thyrsis' 
temperament  to  try  instinctively  to  overcome  mine.  Ap 
parently  the  only  thing  that  will  conquer  him  is  seeing 
me  suffer ;  then  he  will  give  way — he  will  promise  any 
thing  I  want,  blame  himself  for  his  rigidity,  scourge 
himself  for  his  blindness,  do  anything  at  all  I  ask.  So 
I  tell  myself,  everything  will  be  different  now ;  the  last 
problem  is  solved !  I  see  how  good  and  kind  he  is,  how 
noble  his  impulses  are;  he  has  never  failed  me  in  the 
big  things  of  life. 

"I  suppose  Mr.  Harding  writes  you  about  us.  He 
was  up  here  this  afternoon.  He  was  very  gentle  and 
kind  to  me ;  he  talked  about  his  religion.  Did  you  tell 
him  much  about  me?  It  is  a  singular  thing,  how  he 
seems  to  understand  without  being  told.  I  realized 
to-day  that  whenever  we  talk  about  my  life,  we  take 
everything  for  granted.  Also,  it  seems  strange  that  he 
does  not  blame  me;  generally  people  who  are  conven 
tional  think  that  I  am  selfish,  that  I  ought  to  be  loving 
my  baby,  instead  of  struggling  with  my  pitiful  soul. 

"I  wrote  a  little  stanza  the  other  night,  dear  Delia. 


598  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Doesn't  it  seem  strange,  that  when  I  am  at  the  last 
gasp  with  agony,  I  should  find  myself  thinking  of  lines 
of  poetry?  I  called  it  'Life' ;  you  will  say  that  it  is  too 
sombre — 

"  'A  lonely  journey  in  a  night  of  storm, 
Lighted  by  flashes  of  inconstant  faith, 
Goaded  by  multitudes  of  vague  desires, 
And  mocked  by  phantoms  of  remote  delight!" 

§  5.  JUST  at  this  time  Corydon  found  herself  the 
victim  of  backaches  and  fits  of  exhaustion,  for  which 
there  was  no  cause  to  be  discovered.  Each  attack  meant 
that  Thyrsis  would  have  to  drop  his  work,  and  come 
and  be  housekeeper  and  nurse ;  he  would  have  to  repress 
every  slightest  sign  of  the  impatience,  which,  was  burn 
ing  him  up — knowing  that  if  he  gave  vent  to  it,  he 
would  drive  Corydon  half-wild  with  suffering.  After 
two  or  three  such  crises,  he  made  up  his  mind  that  it 
was  impossible  for  him  to  go  on,  until  there  was  some 
one  to  help  her  in  these  emergencies. 

As  a  result  of  their  farm-hunting  expeditions,  they 
had  in  mind  a  place  which  was  a  compromise  between 
their  different  requirements.  It  had  a  good  barn  and 
plenty  of  fruit,  and  at  the  same  time  a  view,  and  a  house 
with  comfortable  rooms,  and  wall-paper  that  was  not 
altogether  unendurable.  It  was  offered  for  four  thou 
sand  dollars,  of  which  nearly  three-quarters  might  re 
main  upon  mortgage;  so  they  had  agreed  that  their 
future  happiness  would  depend  upon  the  war-book's 
bringing  them  in  a  thousand  dollars.  Since  this  hope 
had  failed,  he  had  applied  to  Darrell,  and  to  Paret,  but 
neither  of  them  had  the  money  to  spare.  It  now  fell 
out,  that  just  as  he  was  at  the  point  of  desperation,  he 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  599 

received  a  letter  from  the  clergyman  who  had  married 
thei*.,  Dr.  Hamilton.  This  worthy  man  had  been  read 
ing  Thyrsis'  manuscripts  and  following  his  career ;  and 
he  now  wrote  to  tell  how  greatly  he  had  been  impressed 
by  the  new  novel.  Whereupon  the  author  was  seized 
by  a  sudden  resolve,  and  packed  up  a  hand-sartchel  and 
set  out  for  the  city,  with  all  the  forces  of  his  being 
nerved  for  an  assault  upon  this  ill-fated  clergyman. 

Dr.  Hamilton  sat  in  his  little  office,  looking  pale 
and  worn,  his  face  deeply  seamed  with  lines  of  care. 
As  the  poet  thought  of  it  in  later  years,  he  realized 
that  this  man's  function  in  life  was  to  be  a  clearing^ 
house  for  human  misery — the  wrecks  of  the  competitive 
system  in  all  classes  and  grades  of  society  came  to  him 
to  pour  out  their  troubles  and  beg  for  help.  It  was 
not  so  very  long  afterwards  that  he  went  to  pieces 
from  overwork  and  nervous  strain ;  and  Thyrsis  won 
dered  with  a  guilty  feeling  how  much  his  own  assault 
had  contributed  to  this  result.  Assuredly  it  could  not 
happen  often  that  a  clergyman  had  to  listen  to  a  more 
harrowing  tale  than  this  "murdered  artist"  had  to 
tell. 

The  doctor  heard  it  out,  and  then  began  to  argue : 
like  the  philanthropist  in  Boston,  he  was  greatly 
troubled  by  the  fear  of  "weakening  the  springs  of 
character".  Being  an  "advanced"  clergyman,  he  was 
familiar  with  the  pat  phrases  of  evolutionary  science — 
his  mind  was  a  queer  jumble  of  the  philosophy  of  Her 
bert  Spencer  and  that  of  Thomas  a  Kempis.  But 
Thyrsis  just  now  was  in  a  mood  which  might  have 
moved  even  Spencer  himself;  he  was  almost  frantic  be 
cause  of  Corydon,  whom  he  had  left  half-ill  at  home. 
He  was  not  pleading  for  himself,  he  said — he  could 
always  get  along;  but  oh,  the  horror  of  having  to  kill 


600  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

his  wife  for  the  sake  of  his  books !  To  have  to  sit  Ey 
day  by  day  and  watch  her  dying!  He  told  about  that 
night  when  Corydon  had  tried  to  kill  herself;  and  now 
another  winter  was  upon  them,  and  he  knew  that  unless 
something  were  done,  the  spring-time  would  not  find 
her  alive. 

The  suicide  story  turned  the  balance  with  the  clergy 
man  ;  Herbert  Spencer  was  put  back  upon  the  shelf,  and 
Thomas  a  Kempis  ruled  the  day.  Dr.  Hamilton  said 
that  he  would  see  one  of  his  rich  parishioners,  and  per 
suade  him  to  take  a  second  mortgage  on  the  farm.  And 
so  Thyrsis  went  back,  a  messenger  of  wondrous  tidings. 

A  few  days  later  came  the  check.  The  deed  had  been 
got  ready ;  and  Thyrsis  drove  to  the  farm,  and  carried 
off  the  farmer  and  his  wife  to  the  nearest  notary-public. 
The  old  man  pleaded  to  stay  in  his  home  until  the  new 
year,  but  Thyrsis  was  obdurate,  allowing  him  only  a 
week  in  which  to  get  himself  and  his  belongings  to  an 
other  place.  And  meantime  he  and  Corydon  were  pack 
ing  up.  They  drove  to  another  "vandew",  and  pur 
chased  more  odds  and  ends  of  household  stuff;  and 
Thyrsis  had  his  little  study  loaded  upon  a  wagon,  and 
taken  to  the  new  place. 

A  wonderful  adventure  was  this  moving !  To  enter 
a  real  house,  with  two  stories,  and  two  pairs  of  stairs, 
and  eight  rooms,  and  a  cellar,  and  regular  plastered 
walls,  and  no  end  of  closets  and  shelves  and  such-like 
domestic  luxuries!  To  be  able  to  set  apart  a  whole 
room  in  which  the  baby  might  spread  himself  with  his 
toys  and  marbles  and  dolls  and  picture-books — and 
without  any  one's  having  to  stumble  over  them,  and 
break  their  owner's  heart!  To  have  a  real  parlor,  with 
a  stove  to  sit  by,  and  a  table  for  a  lamp,  and  shelves  for 
books ;  and  yet  another  room  to  eat  in,  and  another  to 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  601 

cook  in !  To  be  able  to  have  a  woman  come  to  wash  the 
dishes  without  making  a  bosom  friend  of  her,  and  hav 
ing  her  hear  all  the  conversation !  To  be  able  to  walk 
through  fields  and  orchards  and  woodland,  and  know 
that  they  belonged  to  one's  self,  and  would  some  day 
shed  their  coat  of  snow  and  blossom  into  new  life! 
Thyrsis  wished  that  he  could  have  the  book  out  of  his 
mind  for  a  month,  so  that  he  might  be  properly  thrilled 
by  this  experience. 

It  was  at  the  Christmas  season,  and  therefore  an  ap 
propriate  times  for  celebrating.  He  went  down  into 
the  "wood-lot" — their  own  "wood-lot" — and  cut  a 
spruce  tree,  and  set  it  up  in  the  dining-room ;  they  hung 
thereon  all  the  contrivances  which  the  associated  grand 
parents  had  sent  down  to  commemorate  an  occasion 
which  was  not  only  Christmas  and  house-warming,  but 
the  baby's  third  birthday  as  well.  Because  of  the  triple 
conjunction,  they  invested  in  a  fat  goose,  to  be  roasted 
in  the  new  kitchen-range;  and  besides  this  there  were 
some  spare-ribs  and  home-made  sausages  with  which  a 
neighbor  had  tempted  them.  It  was  a  regular  story 
book  Christmas,  with  a  snow-storm  raging  outside,  and 
the  wind  howling  down  the  chimney,  and  an  odor  of 
molasses-taffy  pervading  the  house. 

§  6.  AFTER  which  festivities  Thyrsis  bid  farewell 
to  his  family  once  more,  and  went  away  to  wrestle  with 
his  angel.  Weeks  of  failure  and  struggle  it  cost  him 
before  he  could  get  back  what  he  had  lost — before  he 
could  recall  those  phrases  that  had  once  blazed  white- 
hot  in  his  brain,  and  could  see  again  the  whole  gigantic 
form  and  figure  of  his  undertaking.  Many  an  hour 
he  spent  pacing  his  little  eight-foot  piazza — four  steps 
and  a  half  each  way,  back  and  forth ;  many  a  night  he 


602  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

would  sit  before  his  little  fourteen-inch  stove,  so  lost 
in  his  meditations  that  the  stove  would  lose  its  red-hot 
glow,  and  the  icy  gale  which  raged  outside  and  rattled 
the  door  would  steal  in  through  the  cracks  and  set 
him  to  shivering. 

Other  times  he  would  trudge  through  the  snow  and 
mud  to  the  town,  spending  the  day  in  the  library,  and 
then  bringing  out  an  armful  of  books  to  last  him 
through  the  night.  Thyrsis  had  read  pretty  thoroughly 
the  literature  of  the  six  languages  he  knew ;  but  now — 
this  was  the  appalling  nature  of  his  task — he  had  to 
go  back  and  read  it  over  again.  He  did  not  realize*, 
until  he  got  actually  at  the  work,  what  an  utter  over 
turning  there  would  be  in  all  his  ideas.  How  strange 
it  was  to  return  and  read  the  "classics"  of  one's  youth ! 
What  oceans  of  futility  one  discovered,  what  mountains 
of  pretense — and  with  what  forests  of  scholarship 
grown  over  them!  It  seemed  to  Thyrsis  that  every 
where  he  turned  the  search-light  of  his  new  truth,  the 
structure  of  his  opinions  would  topple  like  a  house  of 
cards.  Truly,  here  was  a  "Gotzenddmmerung",  an 
"Umwertimg  alter  Werthe"! 

,  The  worst  of  it  was  that  he  had  to  read,  not  only 
literature,  but  also  history — often  his  own  kind  of  his 
tory,  that  had  not  yet  been  written.  If  he  wished  to 
know  the  Shakespearean  dramas  as  a  product  of  the 
aristocratic  and  imperialist  ideal  in  the  glory  and  in 
toxication  of  its  youth,  he  had  to  study,  not  only 
Shakespeare's  poetry,  but  the  cultural  and  social  life 
of  the  Elizabethan  people.  And  he  could  not  take  any 
man's  word  for  the  truth ;  he  had  to  know  for  himself. 
The  thing  that  would  avail  him  in  this  battle  was  not 
eloquence  and  fervor,  not  the  flashes  of  his  irony  and 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  603 

the  white-hot  shafts  of  his  scorn.     What  he  must  have 
were  facts,  and  more  facts — and  then  again  facts ! 

The  facts  were  there,  to  be  had  for  the  gathering. 
Thyrsis  again  could  only  compare  himself  to  Aladdin 
in  his  palace.  Could  it  be  believed  that  so  many  ideas 
had  be,en  left  for  one  man  to  discover?  It  seemed  to 
him, that  the  kingdoms  of  literature  lay  at  his  mercy; 
he  was  like  a  magician  who  has  discovered  a  new  spell, 
which  places  his  rivals  in  his  power.  He  knew  that  this 
book,  if  he  could  ever  finish  it,  would  alter  the  aspect 
of  literary  criticism,  as  a  blow  changes  the  pattern  in 
a  kaleidoscope. 

Thyrsis  had  failed  many  times  before,  but  this  time 
he»felt  that  success  was  in  his  hands ;  he  knew  the  book- 
world  now,  he  was  master  of  the  game.  This  would  set 
them  to  thinking,  this  would  stir  them  up!  He  had 
got  under  the  armor  of  his  enemy  at  last,  and  he  could 
feel  him  wince  and  writhe  at  each  thrust  that  he  drove 
home.  So  he  wrought  at  his  task,  in  a  state  of  tense 
excitement,  living  always  in  imagination  in  the  midst 
of  the  battle,  following  stroke  with  stroke  and  driving 
a  rout  before  him. — So  he  would  be  for  weeks ;  and  then 
would  come  the  reaction,  when  he  fell  back  exhausted, 
and  realized  that  his  victory  was  mere  phantasy,  that 
nothing  of  it  really  counted  until  he  had  completed  his 
labor.  And  that  would  take  two  years!  Two  years? 

§  7.  FROM  visions  such  as  this  Thyrsis  came  back 
to  wrestle  with  all  the  problems  of  a  household;  with 
pumps  that  froze  and  drains  that  clogged,  with  stoves 
that  went  out  and  ashes  that  spilled,  with  milk-boys 
that  were  late  and  kitchen-maids  that  were  snow-bound. 
He  would  leave  his  work  at  one  or  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  make  his  way  through  the  snow  and  the 


604  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

storm  to  the  house,  and  crawl  into  bed,  and  then  take 
his  chances  of  being  awakened  by  the  baby,  or-  by  some 
spell  of  agony  with  Corydon. 

He  might  not  sleep  alone;  that  supreme-  symbol  of 
domesticity  Corydon  could  not  give, up,  and  he  soon 
ceased  to  ask  for  it.  It  seemed  such  a  little  thing  to 
yield;  and  yet  it  meant  so  much  to  him!  The  room 
where  he  slept  came  to  seem  to  him  a  chamber  of  terror, 
a  place  to  which  he  went  "like  the  galley-slave  at  night, 
scourged  to  his  dungeon".  It  was  a  place  where*  a  crime 
was  enacted;  where  the  vital  forces  of  his- being  were 
squandered,  and  the  body  and  soul  of  him  were  wrung 
and  squeezed  dry  like  a  sponge.  This  was  marriage — 
it  was  the  essence  of  marriage;  it  was  the  slavery  into 
which  he  had  delivered  himself,  the  duty  to  which  he 
was  bound.  And  in  how  many  millions  of  homes  was 
this  same  thing  going  on — this  licensed  preying  of  one 
personality  upon  another?  And  the  nightmare  thing 
was  upheld  and  buttressed  by  all  the  forces  of  society — 
priests  were  saying  blessings  over  it  and  moralists 
were  singing  the  praises  of  it — "the  holy  bonds  of 
matrimony",  it  was  called! 

It  was  all  the  worse  to  Thyrsis  because  there  was  that 
in  him  which  welcomed  this  animal  intimacy.  So  he 
saw  that  day  by  day  their  lives  were  slipping  to  a  lower 
plane;  day  by  day  they  were  discovering  new  weak 
nesses  and  developing  new  vices  in  themselves.  Cory 
don  was  now  a  good  part  of  the  time  in  pain  of  some 
sort ;  and  the  doctors  had  accustomed  her  to  stave  off 
these  crises  with  various  kinds  of  drugs,  so  that  she  had 
a  set  of  shelves  crowded  with  pills  and  powders  and 
bottles.  She  had  learned  to  rely  upon  them  in  emer 
gencies,  to  plead  for  them  when  she  was  helpless ;  and 
so  Thyrsis  saw  her  declining  into  an  inferno.  He  would 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  605 

argue  with  her  and  plead  with  her  and  fight  with  her; 
he  would  spend  days  trying  to  open  her  eyes  to  the 
peril,  to  show  her  that  it  was  better  to  suffer  pain  than 
to  resort  to  these  treacherous  aids. 

§  8.  THEY  still  had  their  hours  of  enthusiasm,  of 
course,  their  illuminations  and  their  resolutions.  Dur 
ing  the- summer,  while  browsing  among  the  English  mag 
azines  in  the  library,  Thyrsis  had  stumbled  upon  an 
astonishing  article  dealing  with  the  subject  of  health. 
He  read  it  in  a  state  of  great  excitement,  and  then  took 
it  home  and  read  it  to  Corydon.  It  told  of  the  achieve 
ments  of  a  gentleman  by  the  name-  of  Horace  Fletcher, 
who  hadt  once  possessed  robust  health,  and  lost  it 
through  careless  living,  and  had  then  restored  it  by 
a  new  system  of  eating.  To  Thyrsis  this  came  as  one 
of  the  great  discoveries  of  his  life.  For  years  every 
instinct  of  his  nature  had  been  whispering  to  him  that 
his  ways  of  eating  were  vicious ;  but  he  had  been  ig 
norant  and  helpless — and  with  all  the  world  that  he  knew 
in  opposition  to  him.  As  he  read  the  article,  he  re 
called  a  talk  he  had  had  with  his  "family  doctor",  way 
back  before  his  marriage,  when  he  had  first  begun  to 
notice  symptoms  of  stomach-trouble.  He  had  sug 
gested  timidly  that  there  might  be  something  wrong  with 
his  diet,  and  that  if  the  doctor  would  tell  him  exactly 
what  he  ought  to  eat,  and  how  much  and  how  often,  he 
would  be  glad  to  adopt  the  regimen.  But  the  doctor 
had  only  laughed  and  answered,  "Nonsense,  boy — don't 
you  get  to  thinking  about  you'r  food !"  And  so  Thyrsis 
had  gone  away,  to  follow  the  old  plan  of  eating  what 
he  liked.  Health,  it  would  seem,  must  be  a  spontaneous 
and  accidental  thing,  it  could  not  be  a  deliberate  and 
reasoned  thing. 


606  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

But  now  he  and  Corydon  became  smitten  with  a  pas 
sion  of  shame  for  all  their  stupidity  and  their  glut 
tony;  they  invested  in  Fletcher's  books,  and  set  out 
upon  this  new  adventure.  They  would  help  themselves 
to  a  very  small  saucerf ul  of  food ;  and  they  would  take 
of  this  a  very  small  spoonful — and  chew — and  chew — 
and  chew.  Mr.  Fletcher  said  that  half  an  hour  a  day 
was  enough  for  the  eating  of  the  food  one  needed ;  but 
they,  apparently,  could  have  chewed  for  hours,  and 
still  been  hungry.  They  labored  religiously  to  stop  as 
soon  as  they  could  pretend  to  be  satisfied;  the  result 
of  which  was  that  Thyrsis  lost  fourteen  pounds  in  as 
many  days — and  it  was  many  a  long  year  before  he 
got  those  fourteen  pounds  back !  He  became  still  more 
"spiritual"  in  his  aspect;  until  finally  he  and  Corydon 
set  out  for  a  walk  one  day,  and  coming  up  a  hill  to  their 
home  they  gave  out  altogether,  and  first  Thyrsis  had  to 
crawl  up  the  hill  and  get  something  to  eat,  and  then 
take  something  down  to  Corydon ! 

However,  in  spite  of  all'their  blunders,  this  new  idea 
was  of  genuine  benefit  to  them ;  at  least  it  put  them  upon 
the  right  track — it  taught  them  the  relationship  be 
tween  diet  and  disease.  They  saw  the  two  as  cause  and 
consequence — they  watched  the  food  they  ate  affecting 
their  bodies  as  one  might  watch  a  match  affecting  a 
thermometer.  They  were  no  longer  victims  of  the  idea 
that  health  must  be  a  spontaneous  and  accidental  thing 
— they  were  set  definitely  to  thinking  about  it,  as  some 
thing  that  could  be  achieved  by  will  and  intelligence. 

But  the  right  knowledge  lay  far  in  the  future;  and 
meantime  they  were  groping  in  ignorance,  and  disease 
was  still  a  mysterious  visitation  that  came  upon  them 
out  of  the  night.  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,  About  mid 
night  will  I  go  out  into  the  midst  of  Egypt;  and  all 

i 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  607 

the  firstborn  in  the  land  of  Egypt  shall  die.  And  there 
shall  be  a  great  cry  throughout  all  the  land  of  Egypt, 
such  as  there  hath  been  none  like  it,  nor  shall  be  like 
it  any  more." 

Their  own  firstborn  had  low  been  on  the  rSgime  of 
the  "child  specialist"  for  a  year  and  a  half.  He  was 
big  and  fat  and  rosy,  and  according  to  all  the  standards 
they  knew,  a  picture  of  health.  He  was  the  pride  of 
his  parents'  hearts — the  one  success  they  had  achieved, 
and  to  which  they  could  turn  their  eyes.  He  was  a 
frightful  burden  to  them — the  most  noisy  and  irre 
pressible  of  children.  But  they  struggled  and  worried 
along  with  him,  and  were  proud  of  him — and  even,  in 
a  stormy  sort  of  way,  were  happy  with  him.  But  now 
a  calamity  fell  upon  him,  bringing  them  the  most  ter 
rible  distress  they  had  yet  had  to  face  in  their  lives. 

§  9.  IT  was  all  the  worse  because  they  laid  the  blame 
upon  themselves.  They  were  accustomed  to  attribute 
sickness  to  this  or  that  trivial  cause — if  Corydon  caught 
a  cold,  it  was  because  she  had  sat  in  a  draught,  and  if 
Thyrsis  was  laid  up  with  tonsilitis,  it  was  because  he 
had  gone  out  for  kindling-wood  without  his  hat.  It 
had  been  their  wont  to  bundle  the  child  up  and  turn 
him  out  to  play;  and  one  very  cold  day  he  had  stood 
a  long  time  under  the  woodshed,  and  had  got  chilled. 
So  that  night  his  head  was  hot,  and  he  was  fretful ;  and 
in  the  morning  he  would  not  eat,  and  apparently  had 
a  fever.  They  sent  off  in  haste  for  the  doctor ;  and  the 
doctor  came  and  examined  him,  and  shook  his  head  and 
looked  very  grave.  It  was  pneumonia,  he  said,  and  a 
serious  case. 

So  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  had  to  put  all  things  else 
aside,  and  gird  themselves  for  a  siege.  There  were 


608  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

medicines  to  be  administered  every  hour,  and  minute 
precautions  to  be  taken  to  keep  the  patient  from  the 
slightest  chill;  he  must  be  in  a  warm  room,  and  yet 
with  some  ventilation.  All  these  things  they  attended 
to,  and  then  they  would  sit  and  gaze  at  the  sufferer, 
dumb  with  grief  and  fear.  Through  the  night  Thyrsis 
sat  by  the  bedside,  while  Cedric  babbled  and  raved  in 
delirium ;  and  no  suffering  that  he  had  ever  experienced 
was  equal  to  this. 

How  he  loved  this  baby,  how  passionately,  how 
cruelly !  How  he  clung  to  him,  blindly  and  desperately 
— the  thought  of  losing  him  simply  tore  his  heart  to 
pieces!  He  would  hold  the  hot  hands,  he  would  touch 
the  little  body ;  how  he  loved  that  body,  that  was  so 
beautiful  and  soft  and  white!  How  many  times  he 
had  bathed  it  and  dressed  it  and  hugged  it  to  him !  He 
would  sit  and  listen  to  the  fevered  prattle,  full  of 
childish  phrases  which  brought  before  him  the  childish 
soul — the  wonderful,  lovable  thing,  so  merry  and  eager, 
so  full  of  mischief  and  curiosity ;  with  strange  impulses 
of  tenderness,  and  flashes  of  intelligence  that  thrilled 
one,  and  opened  long  vistas  to  the  imagination.  He  was 
all  they  had,  this  baby — he  was  all  they  had  saved  out 
of  the  ruin  of  their  lives,  out  of  the  shipwreck  of  their 
love.  What  sacrifices  they  had  made  for  him — what 
agonies  he  represented!  And  now,  the  idea  that  they 
might  never  see  him,  nor  touch  him,  nor  hear  his  voice 
again ! 

Also  would  come  agonies  of  remorse.  Thyrsis  would 
face  the  blunder  they  had  made — it  might  have  been 
avoided  so  easily,  and  now  it  was  irrevocable!  His 
whole  body  would  shake  with  silent  sobbing.  Ah,  this 
curse  of  their  lives,  this  hideous  shame — that  they  had 
not  even  been  able  to  take  proper  care  of  their  child! 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  609 

This  wrong,  too,  the  world  meant  to  inflict  upon  them 
— this  supreme  vengeance,  this  cruel  punishment! 

§  10.  THE  doctor  came  next  morning,  and  found 
the  patient  worse.  This  was  the  crisis,  he  said;  if  the 
little  one  lived  through  the  night —  And  there  he 
paused,  seeing  the  agony  in  the  eyes  of  the  mother  and 
father.  They  would  do  all  they  could,  he  said;  they 
must  hope  for  the  best. 

So  the  siege  went  on.  Thyrsis  sat  through  the  night 
again — and  Corydon,  who  could  not  rest  either,  would 
come  into  the  room  every  little  while,  and  listen  and 
watch.  They  would  hold  each  other's  hand  for  hours, 
dumb  with  suffering ;  ghostly  presences  seemed  to  haunt 
the  sick-chamber  and  set  them  to  trembling.  Thyrsis 
found  himself  thinking  of  that  most  terrible  of  all  bal 
lads,  "The  Erl-King".  How  he  had  shuddered  once, 
hearing  it  sung! — 

"Dem  Vater  grauset's,  er  reitet  geschwind!" 

All  through  the  night  he  seemed  to  hear  the  hammer- 
strokes  of  the  horse's  hoofs  echoing  through  his  soul. 

The  child  lived  through  the  night,  but  the  crisis  was 
not  yet  over.  The  fever  held  on ;  the  issue  of  life  and 
death  seemed  to  hang  upon  the  flutter  of  an  eyelid- 
There  was  one  more  night  to  be  sat  through^  and 
Thyrsis,  whose  restless  intellect  must  needs  be  dealing; 
with  all  issues,  had  by  then  fought  his  way  through 
this  terror  also.  They  must  get  control  of  themselves 
at  all  hazards,  he  said;  they  must  face  the  facts.  If 
so  the  child  should  die — 

He  tried  to  say  something  of  the  sort  to  Corydonv 
seeking  to  steady  her.  But  Corydon  became  almost 


610  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

frantic  at  his  words.  "You  must  not  say  such  a  thing, 
you  must  not  think  such  a  thing!"  she  cried. 

Corydon  had  been  reading  about  "new  thought",  and 
she  insisted  that  would  be  "holding  the  idea"  of  death 
-over  the  child.  "The  thing  for  us  to  do,"  she  said,  "is 
to  make  up  our  minds — he  must  live,  we  must  know 
that  he  will  live !"  — It  was  no  time  to  argue  about 
metaphysics,  but  Thyrsis  found  this  proposition  a 
source  of  great  perplexity.  How  could  a  man  make 
Jbimself  know  what  he  did  not  know? 

The  crisis  passed,  and  the  child  lived.  But  the  ill 
ness  continued  for  a  couple  of  weeks — and  how  pitiful 
It  was  to  see  their  baby,  that  had  been  so  big  and  rosy, 
and  was  now  pale  and  thin  and  weak!  And  when  at 
last  he  got  up  and  went  outdoors  again,  he  caught  a 
cold,  and  there  was  a  relapse,  and  another  siege  of  the 
dread  disease;  the  doctor  had  not  warned  them  suffi 
ciently,  it  seemed.  So  there  was  a  week  or  two  more 
of  watching  and  worrying;  and  then  they  had  to  face 
the  fact  that  little  Cedric  would  be  delicate  for  a  long 
while — would  need  to  be  guarded  with  care  all  through 
the  spring. 

Thyrsis  blamed  himself  for  all  that  had  happened; 
the  weight  of  it  rested  upon  him  forever  afterwards,  as 
if  it  were  some  crime  he  had  committed.  Sometimes 
when  he  was  overwrought  and  overdriven,  he  would  lie 
awake  in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  and  this 
spectre  would  come  and  sit  by  him.  He  had  made  a 
martyr  of  the  child  he  loved,  he  had  sacrificed  it  to 
what  he  called  his  art;  and  how  had  he  dared  to  do  it? 

It  was  hard  to  think  of  a  more  cruel  question  to  put 
to  a  man.  Himself,  no  doubt,  he  might  scourge  and 
drive  and  wreck;  but  this  child — what  were  the  child's 
rights?  Thyrsis  would  try  to  weigh  them  against  the 


THE   CAPTIVE  FAINTS  611 

claims  of  posterity.  What  his  own  work  might  be,  he 
knew;  and  to  what  extent  should  he  sacrifice  it  to  the 
unknown  possibilities  of  his  son?  Some  sacrifice  there 
had  to  be — such  was  the  stern  decree  of  the  "economic 
screw." 

So  Thyrsis  once  more  was  a  field  of  warring  motives  ; 
once  more  he  faced  the  curse  of  his  life — that  he  could 
not  be  as  other  men,  he  could  not  have  other  men's 
virtues.  It  was  the  latest  aspect,  and  the  most  tragic,. 
of  that  impulse  in  him  which  had  made  him  fight  so 
hard  against  marriage ;  which  had  made  him  quote  to 
Corydon  the  lines  of  the  outlaw's  song — 

"The  fiend  whose  lantern  lights  the  mead 
Were  better  mate  than  I!" 


BOOK  XVI 
THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM 


The  scarlet  flush  of  morning  was  in  the  sky;  and 
they  stood  upon  the  hill  again,  and  watched  the  color 
spreading. 

"We  must  go/9  she  was  saying.  "But  it  was  worth 
while  to  come.'9 

"It  was  all  worth-while99  he  said — "all!99 

And  she  smiled,  and  quoted  some  lines  from  the 
poem — 

"Thou  too,  0  Thyrsis,  on  like  quest  wast  bound; 
Thou  wanderedst  with  me  for  a  little  hour! 

Men  gave  thee  nothing;  but  this  happy  quest  9 
If  men  esteem 'd  thee  feeble,  gave  thee  power, 

If  men  procured  thee  trouble,  gave  thee  rest!99 


§  1.  THIS  illness  of  the  baby's  had  been  a  fearful 
drain  upon  their  strength;  and  Thyrsis  perceived  that 
they  had  now  got  to  a  point  where  they  could  no  longer 
stand  alone.  There  must  be  a  servant  in  the  house,  to> 
help  Corydon,  and  do  for  the  baby  what  had  to  be  done. 
It  was  a  hard  decision  for  him  to  face,  for  his  money 
was  almost  gone,  and  the  book  loomed  larger  than  ever* 
But  there  was  no  escaping  the  necessity. 

They  would  get  a  married  couple,  they  decided — 
the  man  could  pay  for  himself  by  working  the  farm. 
So  they  put  an  advertisement  in  a  city  paper,  and  pe 
rused  the  scores  of  mis-spelled  replies.  After  due  cor- 
respondence,  and  much  consultation,  they  decided  upon- 
Patrick  and  Mary  Flanagan ;  and  Thyrsis  hired  a  two- 
seated  carriage  and  drove  in  to  meet  them  at  the  depot, 

It  was  all  very  funny ;  years  afterwards,  when  the 
clouds  of  tragedy  were  dispersed,  they  were  able  to. 
laugh  over  the  situation.  Thyrsis  had  been  used  tc* 
servants  in  boyhood,  but  that  was  before  he  had  ac 
quired  any  ideas  as  to  universal  brotherhood  and  the 
rights  of  man.  Now  he  hated  all  the  symbols  and  symp 
toms  of  mastership ;  he  shrunk  from  any  sort  of  clash 
with  unlovely  personalities — he  would  be  courteous  and 
deprecating  to  the  very  tramp  who  came  to  his  door 
to  beg.  And  here  were  Patrick  and  Mary,  very  Irish, 
enormously  stout,  and  devotedly  Roman  Catholic,  hav 
ing  spent  all  their  lives  as  caretakers  of  "gentlemen's 
country-places".  They  had  most  precise  ideas  as  to 
what  gentlemen's  country-places  should  be,  and  how 

615 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

they  should  be  equipped,  and  how  the  gentlemen  of  the 
country-places  should  treat  their  servants.  And  need 
less  to  say,  they  found  nothing  in  this  new  situation 
which  met  with  their  approval.  There  were  signs  of 
humiliating  poverty  everywhere,  and  the  farm-outfit 
was  inadequate.  As  to  the  master  and  mistress,  they 
must  have  been  puzzling  phenomena  for  Patrick  and 
Mary  to  make  up  their  minds  about — possessing  so 
many  of  the  attributes  of  the  lady  and  gentleman,  and 
yet  being  lacking  in  so  many  others ! 

Patrick  was  a  precise  and  particular  person;  he 
wanted  his  work  laid  out  just  so,  and  then  he  would  do 
it  without  interference.  As  for  Mary — he  stood  in  awe 
of  Mary  himself,  and  so  he  accepted  the  idea  that  Cory- 
don  and  Thyrsis  should  stand  in  awe  of  her  too.  Mary 
it  was  who  announced  that  their  dietary  was  inadequate ; 
she  took  no  stock  at  all  in  Fletcher  and  Chittenden — 
she  knew  that  working-people  must  have  meat  at  least 
four  times  a  week.  Also  Mary  maintained  that  their 
Toom  was  not  large  enough  for  so  stout  a  couple.  Also 
she  arranged  it  that  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  should  get 
the  dinner  on  Sundays — the  Roman  Catholic  church 
being  five  miles  away,  and  the  hour  of  mass  being  late, 
and  the  horse  very  old  and  slow. 

For  two  months  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  struggled 
along  under  the  dark  and  terrible  shadow  of  the  disap 
proval  of  the  Flanagan  family.  Then  one  day  there 
came  a  violent  crisis  between  Corydon  and  Mary — oc 
casioned  by  a  discussion  of  the  effect  of  an  excess  of 
grease  upon  the  digestibility  of  potato-starch.  Cory 
don,  fled  in  tears  to  her  husband,  who  started  for  the 
kitchen  forthwith,  meaning  to  dispose  of  the  Flana 
gans;  when,  to  his  vast  astonishment,  Corydon  experi 
enced  one  of  her  surges  of  energy,  and  thrust  him  to 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  617 

one  side,  and  striding  out  upon  the  field  of  combat, 
proceeded  to  deliver  herself  of  her  pent-up  sentiments. 
It  was  a  discourse  in  the  grandest  style  of  tragedy, 
and  Mary  Flanagan  was  quite  dumbfounded — appar 
ently  this  was  a  "lady"  after  all!  So  the  Flanagan 
family  packed  its  belongings  and  departed  in  a  chas 
tened  frame  of  mind ;  and  Corydon  turned  to  her  spouse, 
her  eyes  still  flashing,  and  remarked,  "If  only  I  had 
talked  to  her  that  way  from  the  beginning!" 

§  2.  THEN  once  more  there  was  answering  of  ad 
vertisements,  and  another  couple  was  spewed  forth  from 
the  maw  of  the  metropolis — "Henery  and  Bessie 
Dobbs",  as  they  subscribed  themselves.  "Henery" 
proved  to  be  the  adult  stage  of  the  East  Side  "gamin" ; 
lean  and  cynical,  full  of  slang  and  humor  and  the  odor 
of  cigarettes.  He  was  fresh  from  a  "ticket-chopper's" 
job  in  the  subway,  and  he  knew  no  more  about  farming 
than  Thyrsis  did;  but  he  put  up  a  clever  "bluff",  and 
was  so  prompt  with  his  wits  that  it  was  hard  to  find 
fault  with  him  successfully.  As  for  his  wife,  she  had 
come  out  of  a  paper-box  factory,  and  was  as  skilled  at 
housekeeping  as  her  husband  was  at  agriculture ;  she 
was  frail  and  consumptive,  and  told  Corydon  the  story 
of  her  pitiful  life,  with  the  result  that  she  was  able  to 
impose  upon  her  even  more  than  her  predecessor  had 
done. 

"Henery"  was  slow  at  pitching  hay  and  loading 
stone,  but  when  the  season  came,  he  developed  a  genius 
for  peddling  fruit ;  he  was  always  hungry  for  any  sort 
of  chance  to  bargain,  and  was  forever  coming  upon 
things  which  Thyrsis  ought  to  buy.  Very  quickly  the 
neighborhood  discovered  this  propensity  of  his,  and 
there  was  a  constant  stream  of  farmers  who  came  to 


618  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

offer  second-hand  buggies,  and  wind-broken  horses,  and 
dried-up  cows,  and  patent  hay-rakes  and  churns  and 
corn-shellers  at  reduced  values ;  all  of  which  rather 
tended  to  reveal  to  Thyrsis  the  unlovely  aspects  of  his 
neighbors,  and  to  weaken  his  faith  in  the  perfectibility 
of  the  race. 

Among  Henery's  discoveries  was  a  pair  of  aged  and 
emaciated  mules.  He  became  eloquent  as  to  how  he 
could  fatten  up  these  mules  and  what  crops  he 
could  raise  in  the  spring.  So  Thyrsis  bought  the 
mules,  and  also  a  supply  of  feed ;  but  the  fattening 
process  failed  to  take  effect — for  the  reason,  as  Thyr 
sis  finally  discovered,  that  the  mules  were  in  need  of 
new  teeth.  When  the  plowing  season  began,  Henery  at 
first  expended  a  vast  amount  of  energy  in  beating  the 
creatures  with  a  stick,  but  finally  he  put  his  inventive 
genius  to  work,  and  devised  a  way  to  drive  them  without 
beating.  It  was  some  time  before  Thyrsis  noted  the 
change ;  when  he  made  inquiries,  he  learned  to  his  con 
sternation  that  the  ingenious  Henery  had  fixed  up  the 
stick  with  a  pin  in  the  end ! 

At  any  time  of  the  day  one  might  stand  upon  the 
piazza  of  the  house  and  gaze  out  across  the  corn-field, 
and  see  a  long  procession  marching  through  the  furrow. 
First  there  came  the  mules,  and  then  came  the  plow,  and 
then  came  Henery ;  and  after  Henery  followed  the  dog, 
and  after  the  dog  followed  the  baby,  and  after  the 
baby  followed  a  train  of  chickens,  foraging  for  worms. 
Little  Cedric  was  apparently  content  to  trot  back 
and  forth  in  the  field  for  hours ;  which  to  his  much- 
occupied  parents  seemed  a  delightful  solution  of  a  prob 
lem.  But  it  happened  one  day  when  they  had  a  visit 
from  Mr.  Harding,  that  Thyrsis  and  the  clergy 
man  came  round  the  side  of  the  house,  and  discovered 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  619 

the  child  engaged  in  trying  to  drag  a  heavy  arm-chair 
through  a  door  that  was  too  small  for  it.  He  was 
wrestling  like  a  young  titan,  purple  in  the  face  with 
rage ;  and  shouting,  in  a  perfect  reproduction  of 
Henery's  voice  and  accent,  "Come  round  here,  God 
damn  you,  come  round  here!" 

There  were  many  such  drawbacks  to  be  balanced 
against  the  joys  of  "life  on  a  farm".  Thyrsis  re 
flected  with  a  bitter  smile  that  his  experiences  and 
Corydon's  had  been  calculated  to  destroy  their  illusions 
as  to  several  kinds  of  romance.  They  had  tried  "Grub 
Street",  and  the  poet's  garret,  and  the  cultivating  of 
literature  upon  a  little  oatmeal;  they  had  not  found 
that  a  joyful  adventure.  They  had  tried  the  gypsy 
style  of  existence;  they  had  gone  back  "to  the  bosom 
of  nature" — and  had  found  it  a  cold  and  stony  bosom. 
They  had  tried  out  "love  in  a  cottage",  and  the  story- 
writer's  dream  of  domestic  raptures.  And  now  they 
were  chasing  another  will  o'  the  wisp — that  of  "amateur 
farming" !  When  Thyrsis  had  purchased  half  the  old 
junk  in  the  township,  and  had  seen  the  mules  go  lame, 
and  the  cows  break  into  the  pear-orchard  and  "founder" 
themselves ;  when  he  had  expended  two  hundred  dollars' 
worth  of  money  and  two  thousand  dollars'  worth  of 
energy  to  raise  one  hundred  dollars'  worth  of  vege 
tables  and  fruit,  he  framed  for  himself  the  conclusion 
that  a  farm  is  an  excellent  place  for  a  literary  man, 
provided  that  he  can  be  kept  from  farming  it. 

§  3.  As  the  result  of  such  extravagances,  when 
they  had  got  as  far  as  the  month  of  February,  Thyrsis' 
bank-account  had  sunk  to  almost  nothing.  However, 
he  had  been  getting  ready  for  this  emergency ;  he  had 
prepared  a  scenario  of  his  new  book,  setting  forth  the 


620  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ideas  it  would  contain  and  the  form  which  it  would  take. 
This  he  sent  to  his  publisher,  with  a  letter  saying 
that  he  wanted  the  same  contract  and  the  same  advance 
as  before. 

And  again  he  waited  in  breathless  suspense.  He  knew 
that  he  had  here  a  work  of  vital  import,  one  that  would 
be  certain  to  make  a  sensation,  even  if  it  did  not  sell 
like  a  novel.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  a  radical  book — per 
haps  the  most  radical  ever  published  in  America;  but 
on  the  other  hand,  it  dealt  with  questions  of  literature 
and  philosophy,  where  occasionally  even  respectable  and 
conservative  reviews  permitted  themselves  to  dally  with 
ideas.  Thyrsis  was  hoping  that  the  publisher  might 
see  prestige  and  publicity  in  the  adventure,  and  decide 
to  take  a  chance ;  when  this  proved  to  be  the  case,  he 
sank  back  with  a  vast  sigh  of  relief.  He  had  now  money 
enough  to  last  until  midsummer,  and  by  that  time  the 
book  would  be  mor<?  than  half  done — and  also  the  farm 
would  be  paying.  *f 

But  alas,  it  seemed  with  them  that  strokes  of  calamity 
always  followed  upon  strokes  of  good  fortune.  At  this 
time  Corydon's  ailments  became  acute,  and  her  nervous 
crises  were  no  longer  to  be  borne.  There  were  anxious 
consultations  on  the  subject,  and  finally  it  was  decided 
that  she  should  consult  another  "specialist".  This  was 
an  uncle  of  Mr.  Harding's,  a  man  of  most  unusual 
character,  the  clergyman  declared ;  the  latter  was  going 
to  the  city,  and  would  be  glad  to  introduce  Cory  don. 

So,  a  couple  of  days  later  came  to  Thyrsis  a  letter, 
conveying  the  tidings  that  she  was  discovered  to  be 
suffering  from  an  abdominal  tumor,  and  should  un 
dergo  an  immediate  operation.  It  would  cost  a  hun 
dred  dollars,  and  the  hospital  expenses  would  be  at 
least  as  much;  which  meant  that,  with  the  bill-paying 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  621 

that  had  already  taken  place,  their  money  would  all  be 
gone  at  the  outset! 

But  Thyrsis  did  not  waste  any  time  in  lamenting  the 
inevitable.  He  was  rather  glad  of  the  tidings,  on  the 
whole — at  least  there  was  a  definite  cause  for  Corydon's 
suffering,  and  a  prospect  of  an  end  to  it.  Both  of 
them  had  still  their  touching  faith  in  doctors  and  sur 
geons,  as  speaking  with  final  and  godlike  authority 
upon  matters  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the  ordinary 
mind.  The  operation  would  not  be  dangerous,  Cory- 
don  wrote,  and  it  would  make  a  new  woman  of  her. 

"If  I  could  only  have  Delia  Gordon  with  me,"  she 
added,  "then  my  happiness  would  be  complete.  Only 
think  of  it,  she  left  for  Africa  last  week !  I  know  she 
would  have  waited,  if  she'd  known  about  this. 

"However,  I  shall  make  out.  Mr.  Harding  is  going 
to  be  in  town  for  more  than  a  week — he  is  attending 
a  conference  of  some  sort,  and  he  has  promised  to 
come  and  see  me  in  the  hospital.  I  think  he  likes  to  do 
such  things — he  has  the  queerest  professional  air  about 
it,  so  that  you  feel  you  are  being  sympathized  with 
for  the  glory  of  God.  But  really  he  is  very  beautiful 
and  good,  and  I  think  you  have  never  appreciated  him. 
I  am  happy  to-day,  almost  exhilarated;  I  feel  as  if 
I  were  about  to  escape  from  a  dungeon." 

§  4.  SUCH  was  the  mood  in  which  she  went  to  her 
strange  experience.  She  liked  the  hospital-room,  tiny, 
but  immaculately  clean ;  she  liked  the  nurses,  who  seemed 
to  her  to  be  altogether  superior  and  exemplary  beings 
— moving  with  such  silence  and  assurance  about  their 
various  tasks.  She  slept  soundly,  and  in  the  morning 
they  combed  and  plaited  her  hair  and  prepared  her  for 
the  ceremony.  There  came  a  bunch  of  roses  to  her 


622  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

room,  with  a  card  from  Mr.  Harding;  and  these  were 
exquisite,  and  made  her  happy,  so  that,  when  the  doctor 
arrived,  she  went  almost  gaily  to  the  operating-room. 

Everything  there  aroused  her  curiosity ;  the  pure 
white  walls  and  ceiling,  shining  with  matchless  clean 
ness,  the  glittering  instruments  arranged  carefully  on 
glass  tables,  the  attentive  and  pleasant-faced  nurses, 
standing  also  in  pure  white,  and  the  doctor  in  his  vest 
ments,  smiling  reassuringly.  In  the  centre  of  the  room 
was  a  large  glass  table,  long  enough  for  a  reclining 
body,  and  through  the  sky-light  the  sun  poured  a  pleas 
ing  radiance  over  all.  "How  beautiful!"  exclaimed 
Corydon ;  and  the  nurses  exchanged  glances,  and  the 
old  doctor  failed  to  hide  an  expression  of  surprise. 

"I  wish  all  my  patients  felt  like  that,"  said  he. 
"Now  climb  up  on  the  table." 

Corydon  promptly  did  so,  and  another  doctor  who 
was  to  administer  the  anaesthetic  came  to  her  side. 
"Take  a  very  deep  breath,  please,"  he  said,  as  he  placed 
over  her  mouth  a  white,  cone-shaped  thing  that  had  a 
rather  suffocating  odor.  Corydon  was  obedience  itself, 
and  breathed. 

In  a  moment  her  body  seemed  to  be  falling  from  her. 
"Oh,  I  don't  like  it!"  she  gasped. 

"Breathe  deeply,  and  count  as  far  as  you  can,"  came 
a  voice  from  far  above  her. 

"Stop!"  whispered  Corydon.  "Oh,  I  don't  want — 
I  want  to  come  back !" 

Then  she  began  to  count — or  rather  some  strange 
voice,  not  hers,  seemed  to  count  for  her ;  as  the  first 
numbness  passed,  farther  and  farther  away  she  seemed 
to  dissolve,  to  become  a  disembodied  consciousness  poised 
in  a  misty  ether.  And  at  that  moment — so  she  told 
Thyrsis  afterwards — the  face  of  Mr.  Harding  seemed 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  623 

to  appear  just  above  her,  and  to  look  at  her  with  a 
pained  and  startled  expression.  It  was  a  beautiful  face, 
she  thought :  and  she  knew  that  everything  she  felt 
was  being  immediately  registered  in  Mr.  Harding's 
mind.  They  were  two  affinitized  beings,  suspended  in 
the  centre  of  a  cosmos ;  their  soul  intelligences  were  all 
that  had  been  left  of  the  sentient  world  after  some 
cataclysm. 

"I  always  knew  that  about  us,"  thought  Corydon, 
and  she  realized  that  the  face  before  her  understood, 
even  though  at  the  moment  it,  too,  was  dissolving.  "I 
wonder  why" — she  mused — "why — "  And  then  the 
little  spark  went  out. 

Two  hours  later  the  doctor  was  bending  over  her, 
anxiously  scrutinizing  her  passive  face.  "Nurse,  bring 
me  some  ice-water,"  he  was  saying.  "She  takes  her  time 
coming  to."  And  sharply  he  struck  her  cheek  and  fore 
head  with  his  finger-tips ;  but  she  showed  no  sign. 

Deep  down  in  some  mysterious  inner  chamber,  be 
neath  the  calm  face,  there  was  being  enacted  a  grim 
spirit-drama.  Corydon's  soul  was  making  a  monstrous 
effort  to  return  to  its  habitation;  Corydon  felt  herself 
hanging,  a  tortured  speck  of  being,  in  a  dark  and 
illimitable  void.  "This  may  be  Hell,"  she  thought.  "I 
have  neither  hands  nor  feet,  and  I  cannot  fight;  but  I 
can  will  to  get  back !"  This  effort  cost  her  inexpressible 
agony. 

A  strange  incessant  throbbing  was  going  on  in  the 
black  pit  over  which  she  seemed  suspended.  It  had  a 
kind  of  rhythm — metallic,  and  yet  with  a  human  reso 
nance.  It  began  way  down  somewhere,  and  proceeded 
with  maddening  accuracy  to  ascend  through  the  semi 
tones  of  a  gigantic  scale.  Each  beat  was  agony  to 
her ;  it  ascended  to  a  certain  pitch  in  merciless  crescendo, 


624  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

then  fell  to  the  bottom  again,  and  began  anew  its  swift, 
maddeningly  accurate  ascent.  Each  time  it  ascended 
a  little  higher,  and  always  straining  her  endurance  to 
the  uttermost,  and  bringing  a  more  vivid  realization  of 
agony.  "Will  you  stop  here,"  it  seemed  to  pulsate. 
"No,  no,  I  will  go  on,"  willed  Corydon.  "You  shall 
not  keep  me,  I  must  escape,  I  must  get  out."  But  it 
kept  up  incessantly,  ruthlessly,  its  strange,  formless, 
soundless  din,  until  the  spirit  writhed  in  its  grasp. 

Finally  it  seemed  to  Corydon  that  she  was  getting 
nearer — nearer  to  something,  she  knew  not  what.  The 
blackness  about  her  seemed  to  condense,  and  she  found 
herself  in  what  was  apparently  the  middle  of  a  lake, 
and  some  dark  bodies  with  arms  were  trying  to  drag 
her  down.  "No,  no,"  she  willed  to  these  forms,  "you 
shall  not.  I  do  not  belong  here,  I  belong  up — up!" 
And  by  a  violent  effort  she  escaped — into  sensations  yet 
more  agonizing,  more  acute.  The  vibrations  were  get 
ting  faster  and  faster,  whirling  her  along,  stretching 
her  consciousness  to  pieces.  "Will  it  never  end?"  she 
thought.  "Have  mercy !"  But  after  an  eternity  of 
such  repetition,  she  found  a  bright  light  staring  at  her, 
and  a  frightful  sense  of  heaviness,  like  mountains  piled 
upon  her.  Also,  eating  her  up  from  head  to  foot,  was 
a  strange,  unusual  pain ;  yes,  it  must  be  pain,  though 
she  had  never  felt  anything  like  it  before.  She  moaned ; 
and  there  came  a  spasm  of  nausea,  that  seemed  to  tear 
her  asunder. 

The  doctor  was  standing  by  her.  "She  gave  me  quite 
a  fright,"  he  was  saying.  "There,  that's  it,  nurse. 
She'll  be  sleeping  sweetly  in  a  minute."  The  nurse 
hurried  forward,  and  Corydon  felt  a  stinging  sensa 
tion  in  her  side,  and  then  a  delightful  numbness  crept 
over  her.  "Oh,  thank  you,  doctor,"  she  whispered. 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  625 

§  5.  THE  next  week  held  for  Corydon  continuous 
suffering,  which  she  bore  with  a  rebellious  defiance — 
feeling  that  she  had  been  betrayed  in  some  way.  "If 
you  had  only  told  me,"  she  wailed,  to  the  doctor.  "I 
would  rather  have  stayed  as  I  was  before !"  For  answer 
he  would  pat  her  cheek  and  tell  her  to  go  to  sleep. 

The  days  dragged  on.  Every  afternoon  her  mother 
came  and  read  to  her  for  several  hours ;  and  in  the 
afternoons  Mr.  Harding  would  come,  and  sit  by  her 
bedside  in  his  kind  way  and  talk  to  her.  Sometimes  he 
only  stayed  a  few  minutes,  but  often  he  would  spend 
an  hour  or  so,  trying  to  dispel  the  clouds  of  gloom  and 
despondency  that  were  hanging  over  her.  Corydon 
told  him  of  her  vision  in  the  operating-room,  and 
strange  to  say  he  declared  that  he  had  known  it  all; 
also  he  said  that  he  had  helped  her  to  fight  her  way 
back  to  life. 

He  seemed  to  understand  her  every  need,  and  from 
his  sympathy  gave  her  all  the  comfort  he  could.  But 
he  little  realized  all  that  it  meant  to  her — how  deeply 
it  stirred  her  gratitude  and  her  liking  for  him.  During 
the  day  she  would  find  herself  counting  the  hours  until 
the  time  he  had  named;  and  when  the  expected  knock 
would  come,  and  his  tall  figure  appear  at  the  door,  her 
heart  would  give  a  sudden  jump  and  send  the  blood 
rushing  to  her  head.  Her  lips  would  tremble  slightly 
as  she  held  out  her  hand  to  him ;  and  as  he  sat  and 
looked  at  her,  she  would  become  uncomfortably  con 
scious  of  the  beating  of  her  heart ;  in  fact  at  times  it 
would  almost  suffocate  her,  and  her  cheeks  would  be 
come  as  fire. 

She  wondered  if  he  noticed  it.  But  he  seemed  con 
cerned  only  for  her  welfare,  and  anxiously  inquired 
how  she  telt.  She  was  not  doing  well,  it  seemed,  and 


626  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

the  doctor  was  greatly  troubled;  her  temperature  had 
not  become  normal  since  the  operation,  and  they  could 
not  account  for  it,  as  she  was  suffering  no  more  than 
the  usual  amount  of  pain.  To  Corydon  this  was  a 
matter  of  no  importance;  she  was  willing  to  lie  there 
all  day,  if  only  the  hour  of  Mr.  Harding's  visit  would 
come  more  quickly.  She  was  beginning  to  be  alarmed 
because  she  had  such  difficulty  in  controlling  her  ex 
citement. 

The  magic  hour  would  strike,  and  the  door  of  hops 
open,  and  there  upon  the  threshold  he  would  appear, 
in  all  his  superb  manhood.  Corydon  thought  she  had 
never  before  met  a  man  who  gave  her  such  an  impression 
of  vitality.  He  was  splendid ;  he  was  like  a  young 
Viking,  who  brought  into  the  room  with  him  the  pure 
air  of  the  Northern  mountains.  When  he  looked  at 
her,  his  eyes  assumed  a  wonderful  expression,  a  "golden" 
expression,  as  Corydon  described  it  to  herself.  And 
day  after  day  she  clothed  this  Viking  in  more  lustrous 
garments,  woven  from  the  threads  of  her  imagination, 
her  innermost  desires  and  her  dreams.  And  always  at 
sight  of  him,  her  heart  beat  faster,  her  head  became 
hotter ;  until  the  bed  she  lay  upon  became  a  bed  of 
burning  coals.  She  realized  at  last  what  had  happened 
to  her,  that  she  loved — yes,  that  she  loved!  But  she 
must  not  let  her  Viking  see  it ;  that  would  be  unpardon 
able,  it  would  damn  her  forever  in  his  sight.  And  so 
she  struggled  with  her  secret.  At  night  she  slept  in 
fitful  starts,  and  in  the  morning  she  lay  pale  and 
sombre.  But  when  he  came  she  was  all  brilliancy  and 
animation. 

§  6.  EACH  night  the  doctor  would  look  anxiously 
at  his  thermometer ;  it  was  a  source  of  great  worry 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  627 

to  him  and  to  Corydon's  parents  that  the  fever 
did  not  abate.  Also,  needless  to  say,  the  news  worried 
Thyrsis ;  all  the  more,  because  it  meant  a  long  stay  in 
the  hospital,  and  more  of  their  money  gone.  At  last 
he  came  up  to  town  to  see  about  it;  and  Corydon 
thought  to  herself,  "This  is  very  wrong  of  me.  It  is 
Thyrsis  I  ought  to  be  interested  in,  it  is  his  sympathy 
I  ought  to  be  craving." 

She  brought  the  image  of  Thyrsis  before  her ;  it 
seemed  vague  and  unreal.  She  found  that  she  remem 
bered  mostly  the  unattractive  aspects  of  him.  And  this 
brought  a  pang  to  her.  "He  is  good  and  noble,"  she 
told  herself;  she  forced  herself  to  think  of  generous 
things  that  he  had  done. 

He  came ;  and  then  she  felt  still  more  ashamed.  He 
had  been  working  very  hard,  and  was  pale  and  haggard ; 
it  was  becoming  to  him  to  be  that  way.  Recollections 
came  back  to  her  in  floods ;  yes,  he  was  truly  good  and 
noble ! 

He  sat  by  her  bedside,  and  she  told  him  about  the 
operation,  and  poured  out  the  hunger  of  her  soul  to 
him.  He  stayed  all  the  morning  with  her,  and  he  came 
again  and  spent  the  afternoon  with  her.  He  read  to 
her  and  kissed  her  and  soothed  her — his  influence  was 
very  calming,  she  found.  After  he  had  gone  for  the 
night,  Corydon  lay  thinking,  "I  still  love  him!" 

How  strange  it  was  that  she  could  love  two  men  at 
once!  It  was  surely  very  wrong!  She  would  never 
have  dreamed  that  she,  Corydon,  could  do  such  a  thing. 
She  thought  of  Harry  Stuart,  and  of  the  unacknowl 
edged  thrill  of  excitement  which  his  presence  had 
brought  to  her.  "And  now  here  it  is  again,"  she 
mused — "only  this  time  it  is  worse!  What  can  be  the 
matter  with  me?" 


628  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

Then  she  wondered,  "Do  I  really  love  Mr.  Harding? 
Haven't  I  got  over  it  now?"  But  the  least  thinking  of 
him  sufficed  to  set  her  heart  to  thumping  again ;  and  so 
she  shrunk  from  that  train  of  thought.  She  wanted 
to  love  her  husband. 

He  came  again  the  next  morning,  and  Corydon  found 
that  she  was  very  happy  in  his  presence.  Her  fever 
was  slightly  lower,  and  she  thought,  "I  will  get  well 
quickly  now." 

But  alas,  she  had  reckoned  in  this  without  Thyrsis ! 
To  sit  in  the  hospital  all  day  was  a  cruel  strain  upon 
him;  the  more  so  as  he  had  been  entirely  unprepared 
for  it.  Corydon  had  assured  him  that  the  operation 
would  be  nothing,  and  that  she  would  not  need  him; 
and  so  he  had  just  finished  a  harrowing  piece  of  labor 
on  the  book.  Now  to  stay  all  day  and  witness  her 
struggle,  to  satisfy  her  craving  for  sympathy  and  to 
meet  and  wrestle  with  her  despair — it  was  like  having 
the  last  drops  of  his  soul-energy  squeezed  out  of  him. 
He  did  not  know  what  was  troubling  Corydon,  but  the 
rapport  between  them  was  so  close,  that  he  knew  she 
was  in  some  distress  of  mind. 

He  stood  the  ordeal  as  long  as  he  could,  and  then  he 
had  to  beg  for  respite.  Cedric  was  down  on  the  farm, 
with  no  one  but  the  servants  to  care  for  him  ;  so  he  would 
go  back,  and  see  that  everything  was  all  right,  and 
after  he  had  rested  up  for  two  or  three  days,  he  would 
come  again.  Corydon  smiled  faintly  and  assented — for 
that  morning  she  had  received  a  note  from  Mr.  Harding, 
saying  that  he  would  be  in  town  the  next  day,  and 
would  call. 

So  Thyrsis  went  away,  and  Corydon  lay  and  thought 
the  problem  over  again.  "Yes,  I  love  my  husband ;  but 
it's  such  an  effort  for  him  to  love  me !  And  why  should 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  629 

that  be?  I  don't  believe  it  would  be  such  an  effort  for 
Mr.  Harding  to  love  me!" 

So  again  she  was  seized  by  the  thought  of  the  young 
clergyman.  And  she  was  astonished  at  the  difference 
in  her  feelings — the  flood  of  emotion  that  swept  over 
her.  Her  heart  began  to  beat  fast  and  her  cheeks  once 
more  to  burn.  He  was  coming  up  to  the  city  on  pur 
pose,  this  time;  it  must  be  that  he  wanted  to  see  her 
very  much! 

That  night  was  an  especially  hard  one  for  her;  she 
felt  as  though  the  frail  shell  that  held  her  were  break 
ing,  as  though  her  endurance  were  failing  altogether. 
The-  fever  had  risen,  and  her  bed  had  seemed  like  the 
burning  arms  of  Moloch.  Once  she  imagined  that  the 
room  was  stifling  her,  and  in  a  sudden  frenzy  of  im 
patience  she  struggled  upon  one  elbow  and  flung  her 
pillow  across  the  room.  In  that  instant  she  had  noticed 
a  new  and  sharp  pain  in  her  side ;  it  did  not  leave  her, 
though  at  the  time  she  thought  little  about  it. 

She  was  all  absorbed  in  the  coming  of  Mr.  Harding; 
by  the  time  morning  had  come  she  had  made  up  her 
mind  that  her  one  hope  of  deliverance  was  in  confession. 
She  must  tell  him,  she  must  make  known  to  him  her 
love;  and  he  would  forgive  her,  and  then  her  heart 
would  not  beat  so  violently  at  sight  of  him,  her  fever 
would  abate  and  she  might  rest. 

But  when  he  sat  there,  talking  to  her,  and  looking 
so  beautiful  and  so  strange,  she  trembled,  and  made 
half  a  dozen  vain  efforts  to  begin.  Finally  she  asked, 
"Have  you  ever  read  that  poem  of  Heine's — 

'Ein  Jiingling  liebt  ein  Madchen, 
Die  hat  einen  Andern  erwahlt?'  " 


630  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  answered;  then  they  were  silent  again. 
Finally  Corydon  nerved  herself  to  yet  another  effort. 
"Mr.  Harding,"  she  said,  "will  you  come  a  little  nearer, 
please.  I  have  something  very  important  to  say  to  you." 
And  then,  waveringly  and  brokenly,  now  in  agonized 
abashment,  now  rushing  ahead  as  she  felt  his  encourage 
ment  and  sympathy,  she  gave  him  the  whole  story  of  her 
suffering  and  its  cause.  When  she  came  to  the  words 
"because  I  love  you",  she  closed  her  eyes  and  her  spirit 
sank  back  with  a  great  gasp  of  relief. 

When  she  opened  them  again,  his  head  was  bowed 
in  his  hands  and  he  did  not  move.  "Mr.  Harding,"  she 
whispered,  "Mr.  Harding,  you  forgive  me,  do  you  not? 
You  do  not  hate  me?" 

He  roused  himself  with  an  effort.  "Dear  child,"  said 
he,  and  as  he  looked  at  her  she  thought  she  had  never 
seen  a  face  so  sad,  so  exquisite — "it  is  I  who  ask  for 
giveness." 

He  rose  and  came  to  her  bedside,  and  took  her  hand 
in  both  of  his.  "It  would  not  be  right  for  me  to  say 
to  you  what  you  have  said  to  me.  We  must  not  speak 
of  this  any  more.  You  will  promise  me  this,  and  then 
you  will  rest,  and  to-morrow  you  will  be  better.  Soon 
you  will  be  well;  and  how  glad  your  husband  will  be 
— and  all  of  us." 

With  that  he  pressed  her  hand  firmly,  and  left  the 
room;  and  Corydon  turned  her  face  to  the  wall,  and 
whispered  happily  to  herself,  "Yes,  he  loves  me,  he  loves 
me!  And  now  I  shall  rest!" 

§  7.  FOR  a  while  she  slept  the  sleep  of  exhaustion, 
nor  did  there  fall  across  her  dreams  the  shadow  of  the 
angel  of  fate  who  was  even  then  placing  his  mark  upon 
her  forehead.  Toward  morning  ske  was  awakened 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  631 

suddenly  with  the  sharp  pain  in  her  side ;  but  it  abated 
presently,  and  Corydon  thought  blissfully  of  the  after 
noon  before.  He  would  come  again  to  her,  she  would 
see  him  that  very  day;  and  so  what  did  pain  matter? 
She  was  really  happy  at  last.  But  as  the  day  advanced, 
she  became  uneasy ;  her  fever  had  not  diminished,  and 
the  pain  was  becoming  more  persistent. 

The  nurse  was  anxious,  too.  Her  mother  came  and 
regarded  her  in  alarm.  But  she  was  thinking  of  Mr. 
Harding.  He  was  coming;  he  might  arrive  at  any 
moment. 

There  was  a  knock  upon  the  door.  Corydon's  pulse 
fluttered,  and  she  whispered,  "Here  he  is !"  She  could 
scarcely  speak  the  words,  "Come  in".  But  when  the 
door  opened,  she  saw  that  it  was  the  doctor.  Her  heart 
sank,  and  she  closed  her  eyes  with  a  moan  of  pain. 
Could  it  be  that  he  was  not  coming?  Could  it  be  that 
she  had  been  mistaken — that  he  did  not  love  her  after 
all?  She  must  see  him — she  must!  She  could  not  en 
dure  this  suspense;  she  could  not  endure  these  inter 
ruptions  by  other  people. 

The  doctor  came  and  sat  by  her.  "I  must  see  what 
is  the  matter  here,"  he  said.  "Why  do  you  not  get  well, 
Corydon?" 

He  questioned  her  carefully  and  looked  grave.  "I 
must  have  a  consultation  at  once,"  he  said. 

Corydon's  hand  caught  at  his  sleeve.  "No,  no !"  she 
whispered. 

"Don't  be  afraid,"  said  the  doctor.     "It  won't  hurt." 

"It  isn't  that,"  said  Corydon.  She  all  but  added,  "I 
must  see  Mr.  Harding!" 

She  was  wheeled  into  the  operating-room,  but  this 
time  there  was  no  interest  in  her  eyes  as  she  regarded 
the  smooth  table  and  the  shining  instruments.  As  they 


632  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

lifted  her  upon  it,  she  shuddered.  "Oh  I  cannot,  I  can 
not!"  she  wailed. 

"There,  there,"  said  the  doctor.  "Be  brave.  We 
wish  simply  to  see  what  the  matter  is.  It  won't  take 
long." 

And  they  put  the  cone  to  her  mouth.  Corydon 
struggled  and  gasped,  but  it  was  no  use,  she  was  in  the 
clutches  of  the  fiend  again ;  only  this  time  there  was  no 
ecstasy,  and  no  vision  of  Mr.  Harding.  Instead  there 
was  instant  and  sickening  suffocation.  Again  she  de 
scended  into  the  uttermost  depths  of  the  inferno;  and 
it  seemed  as  though  this  time  the  brave  will  was  not 
equal  to  the  battle  before  it. 

The  surgeons  made  their  examination,  and  they  dis 
covered  more  diseased  tissue,  and  a  slowly  spreading 
infection.  So  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  operate 
again — they  held  a  quick  consultation,  and  then  went 
ahead.  And  afterwards  they  labored  and  sweated,  and 
by  dint  of  persistent  effort,  and  every  device  at  their 
command,  they  fanned  into  life  once  more  the  faint 
spark  in  the  ashen-grey  form  that  lay  before  them.  But 
it  was  a  feeble  flame  they  got;  as  Corydon's  eyelidc 
fluttered,  the  only  sign  of  recognition  that  came  from 
her  lips  was  a  moan,  and  from  her  eyes  a  look  of  dazed 
stupidity.  But  there  was  hope  for  her  life,  the  doctors 
said ;  and  they  sent  a  telegram  which  Thyrsis  got  three 
days  later,  when  he  had  fought  his  way  to  the  town 
through  five  miles  of  heavy  snow-drifts. 

Meantime  the  grim  fight  for  life  was  going  on.  In 
the  morning  Corydon  opened  her  eyes  to  a  burning 
torture,  the  racked  and  twisted  nerves  quivering  in  re 
bellion.  It  did  not  come  in  twinges  of  pain,  it  was  a 
slow,  deadening,  persistent  agony,  that  pervaded  every 
inch  of  her  body.  She  wondered  how  she  could  bear 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  633 

it,  how  she  could  live.  And  yet,  strangely,  inexplicably, 
she  wanted  to  live.  She  did  not  know  why — she  had 
been  outraged,  she  had  been  deserted  by  all,  she  was 
but  a  feeble  atom  of  determination  in  the  centre  of  a 
hostile  universe.  And  yet  she  would  pit  her  will  against 
them  all,  God,  man,  and  devil;  they  should  not  con 
quer  her,  she  would  win  out. 

So  she  would  clench  her  teeth  together  and  fight. 
For  hours  she  would  stare  at  the  wall,  the  blank,  un 
responsive,  formless  wall  before  her ;  and  then,  when  the 
shadows  of  the  evening  fell,  and  they  saw  she  was  faint 
ing  from  exhaustion,  they  would  come  with  the  needle 
of  oblivion,  and  the  dauntless  soul  would  die  for  the 
night,  and  return  in  the  morning  to  its  pitiless  task. 

§  8.  THYRSIS  received  a  couple  of  letters  at  the 
same  time  as  the  telegram,  and  he  took  the  next  train 
for  the  city.  It  is  said  that  a  drowning  man  sees  be 
fore  him  in  a  few  moments  the  panorama  of  his  whole 
life;  but  to  Thyrsis  were  given  three  hours  in  which  to 
recall  the  events  of  his  love  for  Corydom  He  had  every 
reason  to  believe  that  he  would  find  her  dying ;  and  such 
pangs  of  suffering  as  came  to  him  he  had  never  known 
before.  He  was  in  a  crowded  car,  and  he  would  not  shed 
a  tear;  but  he  sat,  crouched  in  a  heap  and  staring  be 
fore  him,  fairly  quivering  with  pent-up  and  concen 
trated  grief.  God,  how  he  loved  her!  What  a  spirit 
of  pure  flame  she  was — what  a  creature  from  another 
sky!  What  martyrdom  she  had  dared  for  him,  and 
how  cruelly  she  had  been  punished  for  her  daring !  And 
now,  this  was  the  end;  she  was  dying — perhaps  deadf 
How  was  he  to  live  without  her — in  the  bare  and  bar 
ren  future  that  he  saw  stretching  out  before  him  ? 

Flashes  of  memory  would  come  to  him,  waves  of  tor- 


634  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

ment  roll  over  him.  He  would  recall  her  gestures,  the 
curves  of  her  face,  the  tones  of  her  voice,  the  songs  that 
she  had  sung;  and  then  would  come  a  choking  in  his 
throat,  and  he  would  clench  his  hands,  as  a  runner  in 
the  last  moments  of  a  desperate  race.  He  thought  of 
her  as  he  had  seen  her  last.  He  had  gone  away,  careless 
and  unthinking — how  blind  he  had  been!  The  things 
that  he  had  not  said  to  her,  and  that  he  might  have 
said  so  easily!  The  love  he  had  not  uttered,  the  par 
dons  he  had  not  procured!  The  yearnings  and  con 
secrations  that  had  remained  unspoken  all  through  their 
lives — ah  God,  what  a  tragedy  of  impotence  and  failure 
their  lives  had  been ! 

Then  before  his  soul  came  troops  of  memories,  each 
one  a  fiend  with  a  whip  of  fire ;  the  words  of  anger  that 
he  had  spoken,  the  acts  of  cruelty  that  he  had  done ! 
The  times  when  he  had  made  her  weep,  and  had  not 
comforted  her!  Oh,  what  a  fool  he  had  been — what 
a  blind  and  wanton  fool !  And  now — if  he  were  to  find 
her  dead,  and  never  be  able  to  tell  her  of  his  shame  and 
sorrow — he  knew  that  he  would  carry  the  memories  with 
him  all  his  days,  they  would  be  like  blazing  scars  upon 
his  soul. 

She  was  still  alive,  however;  and  so  he  took  a  deep 
breath,  and  went  at  his  task.  There  was  no  question 
now  of  what  he  could  bear  to  do,  but  of  what  he  must 
do;  she  must  be  saved,  and  who  could  do  it  but  him 
self?  Who  else  could  take  her  hands  and  whisper  to 
her,  and  fill  her  with  new  courage  and  hope;  who  else 
could  bid  her  to  live — to  live;  could  rouse  the  fainting 
spirit,  and  bid  it  rise  up  and  set  forth  upon  the  agoniz 
ing  journey? 

So  out  of  the  very  abyss  they  came  together.  But 
when  at  last  the  fight  was  won,  when  the  doctors  an- 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM 

nounced  that  she  wa&  out  of  danger,  Thyrsis  was  fairly 
reeling  with  exhaustion.  When  he  left  her  in  the  after 
noon,  he  would  go  to  his  hotel-room  and  lie  down,  utterly 
prostrated ;  he  would  lie  awake  the  whole  night  through, 
wrestling  with  the  demons  of  horror  that  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  her  bedside. 

So  he  realized  that  he  was  on  the  verge  of  collapse, 
and  that  cost  what  it  would,  he  must  get  away.  Cory- 
don's  mother  was  with  her,  and  when  she  was  strong 
enough  to  be  moved,  she  would  be  taken  back  to  the 
farm.  He  mentioned  this  to  Corydon,  and  she  replied 
that  she  would  be  satisfied.  There  would  be  Mr.  Hard 
ing  also,  she  said ;  Mr.  Harding  wrote  that  he  would 
come  up  to  the  city,  and  do  what  he  could  to  help  her 
in  her  dire  distress. 

§  9.  THERE  came  from  the  higher  regions  a  pass 
upon  a  steamer  to  Florida ;  and  so  Thyrsis  sailed  away. 
With  a  determined  effort  he  took  all  his  cares,  and  locked 
them  back  in  a  far  chamber  of  his  mind.  He  would  not 
think  about  Corydon,  nor  about  what  he  would  do  for 
money  when  he  came  home;  more  important  yet,  he 
would  clear  the  book  out  of  his  thoughts — he  would 
not  permit  it  to  gnaw  at  him  all  day  and  all  night. 

And  by  these  resolves  he  stood  grimly.  He  walked 
the  deck  for  hours  every  day ;  he  watched  the  foaming 
green  waters,  and  the  gulls  wheeling  in  the  sky,  and  the 
sun  setting  over  the  sea,  and  the  new  moon  showering 
its  fire  upon  the  waves.  Gradually  the  air  grew  warm, 
and  ice  and  snow  became  as  an  evil  dream.  A  land  of 
magic  it  seemed  to  which  Thyrsis  came — the  beauty  of 
it  enfolded  him  like  a  clasp  of  love.  He  saw  pine- 
forests,  and  swamps  with  alligators  in  them,  and  live 
oaks  draped  with  trailing  grey  moss.  The  clumps  of 


636  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

palmettos  fascinated  him— he  had  seen  pictures  of  such 
trees  in  the  tropics,  and  would  hardly  have  been  aston 
ished  to  see  a  herd  of  elephants  in  their  shadows. 

He  found  a  beach,  snow-white  and  hard,  upon  which 
he  walked  for  uncounted  miles.  He  gathered  strange 
shells  and  crabs,  and  watched  the  turkey-buzzards  on 
the  shore,  and  the  slow  procession  of  the  pelicans,  sail 
ing  past  above  the  tops  of  the  breakers.  He  saw  the 
black  fins  of  the  grampuses  cutting  the  water,  and 
thought  that  they  were  sharks.  He  stood  for  hours  at 
a  time  up  to  his  waist  in  the  surf,  casting  for  sea-bass ; 
he  got  few  fish,  but  joy  and  excitement  he  got  in 
abundance. 

Then,  back  upon  the  hammocks — to  walk  upon  the 
hard  shell  roads,  and  see  orange  and  \  >mon-groves,  and 
gardens  filled  with  roses  and  magnolias,  and  orchards  of 
mulberry  and  fig-trees.  Truly  this  must  have  been  the 
land  which  the  poet  had  described — 

"Where  every  prospect  pi     ses, 
And  only  man  is  vile 

Thyrsis  stayed  in  a  humble  bof^.^^gp  .  ~,  but 
nearby  was  one  of  the  famous  wini  --resorts  of  the 
Florida  East  Coast,  and  he  was  free  to  go  there,  and 
wander  about  the  lobbies  and  piazza  of  the  palatial 
hotels,  and  watch  the  idle  rich  at  their  diversions.  A 
strange  society  they  were — it  seemed  as  if  the  scum  of 
the  civilization  of  forty-five  states  had  been  blown  into 
this  bit  of  back-water.  Here  were  society  women, 
jaded  with  dissipation;  stock-brokers  and  financiers, 
fleeing  from  the  strain  of  the  "Street" ;  here  were  para 
sites  of  every  species,  who,  having  nothing  to  do  at 
home — or  perhaps  not  even  having  any  home — had  come 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  631 

to  this  land  of  warmth  to  prolong  their  orgies.  They 
raced  over  the  roads  and  beaches  in  autos,  and  over  the 
water  in  swift  motor-boats ;  they  dressed  themselves 
half  a  dozen  times  a  day,  they  fed  themselves  upon  rich 
and  costly  foods,  they  gambled  and  gossiped  and  drank 
and  wantoned  their  time  away.  As  he  watched  them  it 
was  all  that  Thyrsis  could  do  to  keep  himself  from  be 
ginning  another  manifesto  for  the  "Appeal  to  Reason". 
Oh,  if  only  the  toilers  of  the  nation  could  be  brought 
here,  and  shown  what  became  of  the  wealth  they  pro 
duced  ! 

As  if  to  complete  his  study  of  winter-resort  manners 
and  morals,  Thyrsis  encountered  a  college  acquaintance 
whose  father  h>ld  become  enormously  rich  through  a 
mining  speculation,  and  was  here  with  a  party  of 
friends  in  a  private-train.  So  he  was  whirled  off  in 
one  of  half  a  do  ,en  automobiles,  and  rode  for  a  hundred 
miles  or  so  to  m  inland  lake,  and  sat  down  to  an  al 
fresco  luncheon  x>f  such  delicacies  as  pate  de  fois  gras 
and  jellied  grouse  and  champagne.  Afterwards  the 
young  people  wandered  about  and  amused  themselves, 
and  the  elders  played  "bridge",  in  the  face  of  all  the 
raptures  of  thiswonderland  of  nature. 

A  strange  and  sombre  figure  Thyrsis  must  have 
seemed  to  these*  people,  with  his  brooding  air  and  his 
worn  clothing;!  he  rode  home  in  an  auto  with  half  a 
dozen  youths  and  maidens,  and  while  they  flashed  by 
lakes  and  rivers  that  gleamed  in  the  golden  moon-light, 
and  by  orchards  and  gardens  from  which  the  mingled 
scents  of  millions  of  blossoms  were  wafted  to  them,  these 
voung  people  jested  together  and  laughed  and  sang. 

And  Thyrsis  lay  back  and  watched  them  and  studied 
them.      Their  music   was   what   is   called   "rag-time"- 
they  had  apparently  found  nothing  better  to  do  with 


638  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

their  lives  than  to  learn  hundreds  of  verses  and  melo 
dies,  of  which  the  subject-matter  was  the  whims  and 
moods  of  the  half-tamed  African  race — their  vanities 
and  their  barbarous  impulses,  and  above  all  their  hot 
and  lustful  passions.  Song  after  song  they  poured 
forth,  the  substance  of  which  was  summed  up  in  one 
line  that  Thyrsis  happened  to  carry  away  with  him — 

"Ah  lubs  you,  mah  honey,  yes,  Ah  do !" 

It  seemed  to  him  such  a  curious  and  striking  commen 
tary  upon  the  stage  which  leisure-class  culture  had 
reached,  in  the  course  of  its  reversion  to  savagery. 

§  10.  THYRSIS  came  home  after  three  weeks,  browned 
and  refreshed,  and  ready  to  take  up  the  struggle  again. 
He  came  with  the  cup  of  his  love  and  sympathy  over 
flowing;  eager  to  see  Corydon,  and  to  tell  her  his  ad 
ventures,  and  to  share  with  her  his  store  of  new  hope. 

He  found  her  reclining  on  the  piazza  of  the  farm 
house.  The  April  buds  were  bursting  upon  the  trees, 
and  the  odor  of  spring  was  in  the  air;  also,  the  flush 
of  health  was  stealing  back  into  Corydon's  cheeks. 
How  beautiful  she  looked,  and  how  soft  and  gentle 
was  her  caress,  and  what  wistfulness  and  tenderness 
were  in  the  smile  with  which  she  greeted  him ! 

There  was  the  baby  also,  tumultuous  and  excited. 
Thyrsis  took  him  upon  his  knee,  and  while  he  fondled 
him  and  played  with  him,  he  told  Corydon  about  his 
trip.  But  in  a  short  while  it  became  evident  to  him 
that  she  had  something  on  her  mind;  and  finally  she 
sent  the  baby  away  to  play,  and  began,  "There  is 
something  I  have  to  tell  you." 

"Yes,  dear?"  he  said. 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  639 

"It  is  something  very,  very  important." 

"Yes?"  he  repeated. 

"I — I  don't  know  just  how  to  begin,"  said  Corydon. 
"I  hope  you  are  not  going  to  be  angry." 

"I  can't  imagine  myself  being  angry  just  now,"  he 
replied ;  and  then,  struck  by  a  sense  of  familiarity  in 
this  introduction,  he  asked,  with  a  smile,  "You  haven't 
been  seeing  Harry  Stuart,  have  you?" 

Corydon  frowned  at  the  words.  "Don't  speak  of 
that!"  she  said,  quickly.  "I  am  not  joking." 

He  saw  that  she  was  agitated,  and  so  he  fell  silent. 

"I  hesitated  a  long  time  about  telling  you,"  she  went 
on.  "But  you  must  know.  I  am  sure  it's  right  to  tell 
you." 

"By  all  means,  dearest,"  he  answered. 

"It's  a  long  story,"  she  said.  "I  must  go  back  to 
my  first  operation."  And  then  she  began,  and  told  him 
how  she  had  found  herself  thinking  of  Mr.  Harding, 
and  of  the  strange  vision  she  had  had ;  she  told  of  all  her 
fevered  excitements,  and  of  her  confession  to  him. 
When  she  finished  she  was  trembling  all  over,  and  her 
face  and  throat  were  flushed. 

Thyrsis  sat  for  a  while  in  silence,  looking  very  grave. 
"I  sec,"  he  said. 

"You — you  are  not  angry  with  me?"  she  asked. 

"No,  I'm  not  angry,"  he  replied.  "But  tell  me,  what 
has  been  going  on  since?" 

"Well,"  said  Corydon,  "Mr.  Harding  has  been  com 
ing  here  to  see  me.  He  saw  I  needed  help,  and  he 
couldn't  refuse  it.  It  was — it  was  his  duty  to  come." 

"Yes,"  said  the  other.     "Go  on." 

"Well,  I  think  he  had  an  idea  that  the  whole  thing 
was  a  product  of  my  sickness ;  and  when  I  was  well 
again,  it  would  all  be  over." 


640  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"And  is  it,  Cory  don?" 

She  sat  staring  in  front  of  her ;  her  voice  sank  to  a 
whisper.  "No,"  she  said.  "It— it  isn't." 

"And  does  he  know  that?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"He  knows  everything,"  she  replied.  "I  don't  need 
to  tell  him  things." 

"But  have  you  talked  about  it  with  him?" 

"A  little,"  she  said.  "That  is,  you  see,  I  had  to  ex 
plain  to  him — to  apologize  for  what  I  had  done  in  the 
hospital.  I  wanted  him  to  know  that  I  wouldn't  have 
said  anything  to  him,  if  I  hadn't  been  so  very  ill." 

"I  see,"  said  Thyrsis. 

"And  I  want  you  to  understand,"  added  Corydon, 
quickly — "you  must  not  blame  him.  For  he's  the  soul 
of  honor,  Thyrsis ;  and  he  can't  help  how  he  feels  about 
me — any  more  than  I  can  help  it.  You  must  know 
that,  dear !" 

"Yes,  I  know  that." 

"He's  been  so  good  and  so  noble  about  it.  He  thinks 
so  much  of  you,  Thyrsis — he  wouldn't  do  you  wrong, 
not  by  a  single  word.  He  said  that  to  me — over  and 
over  again.  He's  frightened,  you  know,  that  either  of 
us  might  do  wrong.  He's  so  sensitive — I  think  he 
takes  things  more  seriously  than  anybody  we've  ever 
known." 

"I  understand,"  said  Thyrsis ;  and  then,  after  a 
pause,  he  inquired,  "But  what's  to  come  of  it?" 

"How  do  you  mean?"  she  asked. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"Why,  I  don't  know  that  there's  anything  to  do, 
Thyrsis.  What  would  there  be?" 

"But  are  you  going  on  being  in  love  with  him  for 
ever  ?" 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM 

"I — I  don't  see  how  I  can  tell,  Thyrsis.  Would  it 
do  any  harm  ?" 

"It  might  grow  on  you,"  he  said,  with  a  slight  smile. 
"It  sometimes  does." 

"Mr.  Harding  said  we  ought  never  to  speak  of  it 
again,"  said  she.  "And  I  guess  he's  right  about  that. 
He  said  that  our  lives  would  always  be  richer,  because 
we  had  discovered  each  other's  souls ;  that  it  would 
help  us  to  grow  into  a  nobler  life." 

"I  see,"  said  Thyrsis.  "But  it's  a  trifle  disconcerting 
at  first.  I'll  need  a  little  time  to  get  used  to  it." 

"Mr.  Harding  is  very  anxious  to  know  you  better," 
remarked  Corydon.  "But  you  see,  he's  afraid  of  you, 
Thyrsis.  You  are  so  direct — you  get  to  the  point  too 
quickly  for  him." 

"Um — yes,"  said  he.     "I  can  imagine  that." 

"And  he  thinks  you  distrust  him,"  she  went  on — 
"just  because  he's  orthodox.  But  he's  really  not  half 
as  backward  as  you  think.  His  faith  means  a  great 
deal  to  him.  I  only  wish  I  had  such  a  faith  in  my  own 
life." 

To  which  Thyrsis  responded,  "God  knows,  my  dear, 
I  wish  you  had." 

§  11.  THE  young  clergyman  came  to  call  the  next 
afternoon,  and  the  three  sat  upon  the  lawn  and  talked. 
They  talked  about  Florida,  and  then  about  Socialism 
— as  was  inevitable,  after  Thyrsis  had  described  the 
population  of  the  East  Coast  hotels.  But  he  felt  con 
strained  and  troubled — he  did  not  know  just  how  a  man 
should  conduct  himself  with  his  wife's  lover ;  and  so  in 
the  end  he  excused  himself  and  strolled  off. 

He  came  back  as  Mr.  Harding  was  leaving;  and  it 
seemed  to  him  that  the  other's  face  wore  a  look  of 


642  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

pain  and  distress.  Also,  at  supper  he  noted  that  Cory- 
don  was  ill  at  ease. 

"Something  has  gone  wrong  with  your  program?" 
he  inquired. 

To  which  Corydon  answered,  "Mr.  Harding  thinks 
he  ought  not  to  come  any  more." 

"Not  come  any  more?" 

"He  says  I  don't  need  him  now.  And  he  thinks — 
he  thinks  it  isn't  right.  He's  afraid  to  come." 

And  so  a  week  passed,  and  the  young  clergyman  was 
not  seen  again.  Thyrsis  noticed  that  his  wife  was  silent 
a  great  deal;  and  that  when  she  did  talk,  she  talked 
about  Mr.  Harding.  His  heart  ached  to  see  her  as  she 
was,  so  pitifully  weak  and  appealing.  She  was  scarcely 
able  to  walk  alone  yet;  and  she  complained  also  that 
her  mind  had  been  weakened  by  the  frightful  ordeal 
she  had  undergone.  It  exhausted  her  to  do  any  think 
ing  at  all ;  and  she  seemed  to  have  forgotten  nearly  all 
she  knew — there  were  whole  subjects  upon  which  her 
mind  appeared  to  be  a  blank. 

So  he  gave  up  trying  to  think  about  his  book,  and 
went  about  all  day  pondering  this  new  problem.  It 
was  one  of  the  laws  of  the  marriage  state  that  he  must 
suffer  whenever  she  suffered.  It  was  never  permitted 
to  him  to  question  the  reality  of  any  of  her  emotions; 
if  they  were  real  to  her,  they  were  real  in  the  only 
sense  that  counted ;  and  he  must  take  them  with  the 
entire  tragic  seriousness  that  she  took  them,  he  must  re 
gard  them  as  inevitable  and  fatal.  For  himself,  he 
could  change  or  suppress  emotions — that  ability  was 
the  most  characteristic  fact  about  him;  but  Corydon 
could  not  do  it,  and  so  he  was  not  permitted  to  do  it. 
That  would  be  to  manifest  the  "cold"  and  "stern"  self, 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  643 

which  was  to  Corydon  an  object  of  abhorrence  and 
fear. 

So  now  he  went  about  all  day,  brooding  over  this 
trouble.  He  would  come  to  Corydon  and  see  her  gazing 
across  the  valley  with  a  melancholy  look  upon  her 
features ;  he  would  see  her,  with  her  sweet  face  as  if 
suffused  with  unshed  tears.  And  what  was  he  to  do 
about  it?  Was  he  to  rebuke  her — however  gently — 
and  urge  her  to  suppress  this  yearning?  To  do  that 
would  be  to  plunge  her  into  abysses  of  grief.  Or  was 
he  to  come  to  her,  and  utter  his  own  love  to  her,  and 
draw  her  to  him  again  ?  He  knew  that  he  could  do  that 
— he  was  conceited  enough  to  believe  that  with  his  elo 
quence  and  his  power  of  soul,  he  could  have  wiped  Mr. 
Harding  clean  out  of  her  thoughts  in  a  few  days.  But 
then,  when  he  had  done  it,  he  would  have  to  go  back  to 
the  task  of  revolutionizing  the  world's  critical  stand 
ards ;  and  what  would  become  of  Corydon  after  that? 
What  she  needed,  he  told  himself,  was  a  love  that  was 
not  a  will  o'  the  wisp  and  a  fraud,  but  a  love  that  was 
real  and  unceasing;  she  needed  the  love  of  a  man,  and 
not  of  an  artist ! 

Here  were  two  young  people  who  were  in  love  with 
each  other;  and  according  to  the  specifications  of  the 
moral  code,  they  had  their  minds  made  up  to  sublime 
renunciation.  But  then,  Thyrsis  had  a  moral  code  of 
his  own,  and  in  it  renunciation  was  not  the  only  law 
of  life. 

It  was  only  when  he  thought  of  losing  Corydon,  that 
he  realized  to  the  full  how  much  he  loved  her.  Then 
all  their  consecrations  and  their  pledges  would  come 
back  to  him ;  he  would  hold  her  as  the  greatest  human 
soul  that  he  had  ever  met.  But  it  was  a  strange  para 
dox,  that  precisely  the  depth  of  his  love  for  her  made 


644  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

him  willing  to  think  of  losing  her.  He  loved  her  for 
herself,  and  not  for  anything  she  gave  him ;  he  wanted 
her  to  be  happy,  he  wanted  her  to  grow  and  achieve, 
and  in  order  to  see  her  do  this  he  would  make  any  sacri 
fice  in  the  world.  In  how  many  hours  of  insight  had  it 
become  clear  to  him  that  he  himself  could  never  make 
her  happy — that  he  was  not  the  man  to  be  her  husband ! 
Now  it  seemed  as  if  the  time  had  come  for  him  to  prove 
that  he  meant  what  he  had  said — rthat  he  was  willing 
to  stand  by  his  vision  and  to  act  upon  it. 

So  after  one  day  of  especial  unhappiness,  he  made 
up  his  mind  to  a  desperate  resolve ;  and  at  night,  when 
all  the  household  was  asleep,  he  went  over  to  his  lonely 
study  and  sat  down  with  a  pen  in  his  hand,  and  sum 
moned  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Harding  before  him. 

"I  have  concluded  to  write  you  a  letter,"  he  began. 
"You  will  find  it  a  startling  and  unusual  one.  I  can 
only  beg  you  to  believe  that  I  have  written  it  after  much 
hesitation,  and  that  it  represents  most  earnest  and 
prayerful  thought  upon  my  part.  « 

"Since  my  return,  I  have  become  aware  of  the  situ 
ation  which  has  developed  between  yourself  and  my 
wife.  Her  welfare  is  dearer  to  me  than  anything  else 
in  the  world;  and  after  thinking  it  over,  I  concluded 
that  her  welfare  required  that  I  should  explain  to  you 
the  relationship  which  exists  between  us.  It  seems  un 
likely  that  you  could  know  about  it  otherwise,  for  it 
is  a  very  unusual  relationship. 

"I  suppose  there  is  no  need  for  me  to  tell  you  that 
Corydon  is  not  happy.  She  never  has  been  happy  as 
my  wife,  and  I  fear  that  she  never  will  be.  She  is  by 
nature  warm-hearted,  craving  affection  and  companion 
ship.  I,  on  the  other,  hand,  am  by  nature  impersonal 
and  self-absorbed — I  am  compelled  by  the  exigencies 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  645 

of  my  work  to  be  ab^jj^dteiLaiidindifFerent  to  things 
about  me.  I  perceived  this  before  our  marriage,  but 
not  clearly  enough  to  save  her;  it  has  been  her  mis 
fortune  that  I  have  loved  her  so  dearly  that  I  have 
been  driven  to  attempt  the  impossible.  I  am  continu- 
ually  deceiving  myself  into  the  belief  that  I  am  suc 
ceeding — and  I  am  continually  deceiving  Corydon  in 
the  same  way.  It  has  been  our  habit  to  talk  things  out 
between  us  frankly;  but  this  is  a  truth  from  which  we 
have  shrunk  instinctively.  I  have  always  seen  it  as  the 
seed  of  what  must  grow  to  be  a  bitter  tragedy. 

"The  possibility  that  Corydon  might  come  to  love 
some  other  man  was  one  that  I  had  not  thought  of— 
it  was  very  stupid  of  me,  no  doubt.  But  now  it  has 
happened ;  and  I  have  worked  over  the  problem  with  all 
the  faculties  I  possess.  A  man  who  was  worthy  of 
Corydon's  love  would  be  very  apt,  under  the  circum 
stances,  to  feel  that  he  must  crush  his  impulses  towards 
her.  But  when  we  were  married,  it  was  with  the  agree 
ment  that  our  marriage  should  be  binding  upon  us  only 
so  long  as  it  was  for  the  highest  spiritual  welfare  of 
both;  and  by  that  agreement  it  is  necessary  that  we 
should  stand  at  all  times.  My  purpose  in  writing  to 
you  is  to  let  you  know  that  I  have  no  claim  upon  Cory 
don  which  prohibits  her  from  continuing  her  acquaint 
ance  with  you;  and  that  if  in  the  course  of  time  it 
should  become  clear  that  Corydon  would  be  happier  as 
your  wife  than  as  mine,  I  should  regard  it  as  my  duty 
to  step  aside.  Having  said  this,  I  feel  that  I  have  done 
my  part.  I  leave  the  matter  in  your  hands,  with  the 
fullest  confidence  in  your  sincerity  and  good  faith." 

Thyrsis  wrote  this  letter,  and  read  it  a  couple  of 
times.  Then  he  decided  to  sleep  over  it ;  and  the  next 
morning  he  wakened,  and  read  it  again — with  a  shock 


646  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

of  surprise.  He  found  it  a  startling  letter.  It  opened 
up  vistas  to  his  spirit;  vistas  of  loneliness  and  grief — 
and  then  again,  vistas  of  freedom  and  triumph.  If  he 
were  to  mail  it,  it  would  be  irrevocable ;  and  it  would 
prooably  mean  that  he  would  lose  Corydon.  And  coidd 
he  make  up  his  mind  to  lose  her?  His  swift  thoughts 
flew  to  their  parting;  there  were  tears  in  his  eyes — 
his  love  came  back  to  him,  as  it  had  when  he  thought 
she  was  dying.  But  then  again,  there  came  a  thrill  of 
exultation;  the  captive  lion  within  him  smelt  the  air 
of  the  jungle,  and  rattled  his  chains  and  roared. 

Throughout  breakfast  he  was  absent-minded  and  ill 
at  ease;  he  bid  Corydon  a  farewell  which  puzzled  her 
by  its  tenderness,  and  then  started  to  walk  to  Bellevue 
with  the  letter.  Half  way  in,  he  stopped.  No,  he  could 
not  do  it — it  was  a  piece  of  madness  ;  but  then  he  started 
again — he  must  do  it.  He  found  himself  pacing  up  and 
down  before  the  post  office,  where  for  nearly  an  hour  he 
struggled  to  screw  his  courage  to  the  sticking-point. 
Once  he  started  away,  having  made  up  his  mind  that  he 
would  take  another  day  to  think  the  matter  over ;  but 
after  he  had  walked  half  a  mile  or  so,  he  changed  his 
mind  and  strode  back,  and  dropped  the  letter  in  the 
box. 

And  then  a  pang  smote  him.  It  was  done!  All  the 
way  as  he  walked  home  he  had  to  fight  with  an  impulse 
to  go  back,  and  persuade  the  postmaster  to  return  the 
letter  to  him! 

§  12.  THYRSIS  figured  that  the  fatal  document 
would  reach  Mr.  Harding  that  afternoon ;  and  the  next 
morning  in  his  anxiety  he  walked  a  mile  or  two  to  meet 
the  mail-carrier  on  his  way.  Sure  enough,  there  was  a 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  647 

reply  from  the  clergyman.     He  tore  it  open  and  read 
it  swiftly: 

"I  received  your  letter,  and  I  hasten  to  answer.  I 
cannot  tell  you  the  distress  of  mind  which  it  has  caused 
me.  There  has  been  a  most  dreadful  misundertanding, 
and  I  can  only  hope  that  it  has  not  gone  too  far  to  be 
corrected.  I  beg  you  to  believe  me  that  there  has  been 
nothing  between  your  wife  and  myself  that  could  jus 
tify  the  inference  you  have  drawn.  Your  wife  was  in 
terrible  distress  of  spirit,  and  I  visited  her  and  tried 
to  comfort  her — such  is  my  duty  as  a  clergyman,  as 
I  conceive  it.  I  did  nothing  but  what  a  clergyman 
should  properly  do,  and  you  have  totally  misunderstood 
me,  and  also  your  wife,  who  is  the  most  innocent  and 
gentle  and  trusting  of  souls.  She  is  utterly  devoted 
to  you,  and  the  idea  that  the  help  I  have  tried  to  give 
her  should  be  the  occasion  of  any  misunderstanding 
between  you  is  dreadful  for  me  to  contemplate. 

"I  must  implore  you  to  believe  this,  and  dismiss  these 
cruel  suspicions  from  your  mind.  If  I  were  to  be  the 
cause  of  breaking  up  your  home,  and  wrecking  Cory- 
don's  life,  it  would  be  more  than  I  could  bear.  I  have 
a  most  profound  belief  in  the  sanctity  of  the  institution 
of  marriage,  and  not  for  anything  in  the  world  would 
I  have  been  led  to  do,  or  even  to  contemplate  in  my  own 
thoughts,  anything  which  would  trespass  upon  its  obli 
gations.  I  repeat  to  you  with  all  the  earnestness  of 
which  I  am  capable  that  your  idea  is  without  basis, 
and  I  beg  you  to  banish  it  from  your  mind.  You  may 
rely  upon  it  that  I  will  not  see  your  wife  again,  under 
any  circumstances  imaginable." 

Thyrsis    read    this,    and    then    stared    before    him 


648  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

with  knitted  brows.  "Why,  what's  the  matter  with 
the  man?"  he  said  to  himself.  And  then  he  read  the 
letter  over  again,  weighing  its  every  phrase.  "Did 
he  think  my  letter  was  sarcasm?"  he  wondered.  "Did  he 
think  I  was  angry?" 

He  went  to  his  study  and  got  the  rough  draft  of  his 
own  letter,  and  reread  and  pondered  it.  No,  he  con 
cluded,  it  was  not  possible  that  Mr.  Harding  had 
thought  he  was  angry.  "He's  trying  to  dodge !"  he 
exclaimed.  "He  can't  bring  himself  to  face  the  thing !" 

But  then  again,  he  wondered.  Could  it  be  that  the 
man  was  right;  could  it  be  that  Corydon  had  misun 
derstood  him  and  his  attitude?  Or  had  he  perhaps  ex 
perienced  a  reaction,  and  was  now  trying  to  deny  his 
feelings  ? 

For  several  hours  Thyrsis  pondered  the  problem ;  and 
then  he  went  and  sat  by  her,  as  she  was  reading  on  the 
piazza.  "You  haven't  heard  anything  more  from  Mr. 
Harding,  have  you?"  he  asked. 

"Nothing,"  said  Corydon. 

"What  do  you  suppose  he  intends  to  do?" 

"I— I  don't  know,"  she  said.  "I  don't  think  he 
means  to  come  back." 

"But  why  not,  dear?" 

"He's  afraid  to  trust  himself,  Thyrsis." 

"You  think  he  really  cares  for  you,  then?" 

"Yes,  dear." 

"But,  how  can  you  be  sure?"  he  asked. 

At  which  Corydon  smiled.  "A  woman  has  ways  of 
knowing  about  such  things,"  she  said. 

"I  wish  you'd  tell  me  about  it,"  said  he. 

But  after  a  little  thought,  she  shook  her  head.  "May 
be  some  day,  but  not  now.  It  wouldn't  be  fair  to  him. 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  649 

It  isn't  going  any  further,  and  that's  enough  for  you 
to  know." 

"He  must  be  unhappy,  isn't  he?"  said  Thy r sis,  art 
fully. 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  "he's  unhappy,  I'm  sure.  He 
takes  things  very  seriously." 

Thyrsis  paused  a  moment.  "Did  he  tell  you  that  he 
loved  you?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  said  Corydon.  "He — he  wouldn't  have  per 
mitted  himself  to  do  that.  That  would  have  been 
wrong." 

"But  then— what  did  he  do?" 

"He  looked  at  me,"  she  said. 

"When  he  went  off  the  other  day — did  he  know  how 
you  still  felt?" 

"Yes,  Thyrsis;  why  do  you  ask?" 

"I  thought  you  might  have  been  deceiving  yourself." 

At  which  she  smiled  and  replied,  "I  wouldn't  have 
bothered  to  tell  you  in  that  case." 

§  13.  So  Thyrsis  strolled  away,  and  after  duly  con 
sidering  the  matter,  he  sat  himself  down  to  compose 
another  letter  to  the  young  clergyman. 

"My  DEAR  MR.  HARDING: 

"I  read  your  note  with  a  great  deal  of  perplexity. 
It  is  evident  to  me  that  I  have  not  made  the  situation 
clear  to  you;  you  probably  do  not  find  it  easy  to 
realize  the  frankness  which  Corydon  and  I  maintain  in 
our  relationship.  I  must  tell  you  at  the  outset  that 
she  has  narrated  to  me  what  has  passed  between  you, 
and  so  I  am  not  dealing  with  'cruel  suspicions',  but 
with  facts.  Can  I  not  persuade  you  to  do  the  same? 

"It  is  difficult  for  me  to  be  sure  just  what  is  in  your 


650  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

mind.  But  for  one  thing,  let  me  make  certain  that  you 
are  not  trying  to  read  anything  between  the  lines  of 
what  I  write  you.  Please  understand  I  am  not  angry, 
or  jealous,  or  suspicious;  also,  I  am  not  unhappy — at 
least  not  so  unhappy  but  that  I  can  stand  it.  I  have 
stood  a  good  deal  of  unhappiness  in  my  life,  and  Cory- 
don  has  also. 

"You  tell  me  about  your  attitude  towards  my  wife. 
Of  course  it  may  be  that  as  you  come  to  look  back 
upon  what  has  passed  between  you,  it  seems  to  you  that 
your  feeling  for  her  was  not  deep  and  permanent,  and 
that  you  would  prefer  not  to  continue  your  acquaint 
ance  with  her.  That  would  be  your  right — you  have 
not  pledged  yourself  in  any  way.  All  that  I  desire 
is,  that  in  considering  the  state  of  your  feelings,  you 
should  deal  with  them,  and  not  with  any  duty  which 
you  may  imagine  you  owe  to  me.  I  have  no  claim  in 
the  matter,  and  any  that  I  might  have,  I  forego. 

"The  crux  of  the  whole  difficulty  I  imagine  must  lie 
in  what  you  say  about  your  'profound  belief  in  the 
sanctity  of  the  institution  of  marriage'.  That  is,  of 
course,  a  large  question  to  attempt  to  discuss  in  a  let 
ter.  I  can  only  say  that  I  once  had  such  a  belief,  and 
that  as  a  result  of  my  studies  I  have  it  no  longer.  I 
see  the  institution  of  marriage  as  a  product  of  a  cer 
tain  phase  of  the  economic  development  of  the  race, 
which  phase  is  rapidly  passing,  if  it  be  not  already  past. 
And  the  institution  to  me  seems  to  share  in  the  evils 
of  the  economic  phase;  indeed  I  am  accustomed,  when 
invited  to  discuss  the  institution  of  marriage,  to  insist 
upon  discussing  what  actually  exists — which  is  the  in 
stitution  of  marriage-plus-prostitution. 

"Our  economic  system  affords  to  certain  small  classes 
of  men — to  capitalists,  to  merchants,  to  lawyers,  to 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  651 

clergymen — opportunities  of  comfort  and  dignity  and 
knowledge  and  health  and  virtue.  But  to  certain  other 
classes,  and  far  larger  classes — to  miners,  to  steel- 
workers,  to  garment-makers — it  deals  out  misery  and 
squalor  and  ignorance  and  disease  and  vice.  And  in  the 
case  of  women  it  does  exactly  the  same ;  to  some  it  gives 
a  sheltered  home,  with  comfort  and  beauty  and  peace ; 
while  to  others  it  gives  a  life  of  loneliness  and  sterility, 
and  to  others  a  life  of  domestic  slavery,  and  to  yet 
others  only  the  horrors  of  the  brothel.  And  when  you 
come  to  investigate,  you  find  that  the  difference  is  every 
where  one  of  economic  advantage.  The  merchant,  the 
lawyer,  the  clergyman,  has  education  and  privilege,  he 
can  wait  and  make  his  terms ;  but  the  miner,  the  steel- 
worker,  the  sweat-shop-toiler,  has  to  sell  his  labor  for 
what  will  keep  him  alive  that  day.  And  in  the  same 
way  with  women — some  can  acquire  accomplishments, 
virtues,  charms ;  and  when  it  comes  to  giving  their 
love,  they  can  secure  the  life-contract  which  we  call 
marriage.  But  the  daughter  of  the  slums  has  no  op 
portunity  to  acquire  such  accomplishments  and  virtues 
and  charms,  and  often  she  cannot  hold  out  for  such  a 
bargain — she  sells  her  love  for  the  food  and  shelter  that 
she  needs  to  keep  her  alive. 

"This  will  seem  radical  doctrine  to  you,  I  suppose; 
I  have  noticed  that  you  take  our  institutions  at  their 
face-value,  and  do  not  ask  how  much  in  them  may  be 
sham.  But  it  seems  to  me  there  is  no  need  to  go  into 
that  matter  here,  for  no  trespass  upon  the  marriage 
obligation  is  proposed.  The  conventions  undoubtedly 
give  me  the  right  to  be  outraged  because  my  wife  is  in 
love  with  another  man ;  I  can  denounce  him,  and  hu 
miliate  her.  But  if  I  am  willing  to  forego  this  right, 
if  I  do  not  care  to  play  Othello  to  her  Desdemona, 


LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

what  then?  Who  can  claim  to  be  injured  by  my  re 
nunciation  ? 

"Of  course  I  know  it  is  said  that  marriages  are 
made  in  Heaven,  and  that  what  God  hath  joined  to 
gether,  no  man  may  put  asunder.  But  it  is  difficult 
for  me  to  imagine  that  an  intelligent  man  would  take 
this  attitude  at  the  present  day.  If  I  were  dead,  you 
would  surely  recognize  that  Corydon  might  remarry ; 
you  would  recognize  it,  I  presume,  if  I  were  hopelessly 
insane,  or  degenerate.  What  if  I  were  in  the  habit  of 
getting  drunk  and  maltreating  her — would  you  claim 
that  she  was  condemned  to  suffer  this  for  life?  Or 
suppose  that  I  were  found  to  be  physically  impotent? 
And  can  you  not  recognize  the  fact  that  there  might 
be  impotence  of  an  intellectual  and  spiritual  sort,  which 
could  leave  a  woman  quite  as  unhappy,  and  make  her 
life  quite  as  barren  and  futile? 

"Let  us  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  the  argument,  that 
I  have  stated  correctly  the  facts  between  Corydon  and 
myself;  that  there  exists  between  us  a  fundamental  dif 
ference  in  temperament,  which  makes  it  certain  that, 
however  much  we  might  respect  and  admire,  and  even 
love  each  other,  we  could  never  either  of  us  be  happy 
as  man  and  wife;  and  suppose  that  Corydon  were  to 
meet  some  other  man,  with  whom  she  could  live  har 
moniously;  and  that  she  loved  him  sincerely,  and  he 
loved  her;  and  that  I  were  to  recognize  this,  and  be 
willing  that  she  should  leave  me — do  you  mean  that 
you  would  maintain  that  such  a  course  was  wrong? 
And  if  it  were,  with  whom  would  the  blame  be?  With 
her,  because  she  did  not  condemn  herself  to  a  lifetime 
of  failure?  Or  with  me,  because  I  did  not  desire  her 
to  do  this — because  I  did  not  wish  to  waste  my  life- 
force  in  trying  to  content  a  discontented  woman? 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  653 

"I  might  add  that  I  have  said  nothing  to  Corydon 
about  having  written  to  you;  she  has  no  idea  that  I 
have  thought  of  such  a  thing,  and  she  would  be  horri 
fied  at  the  suggestion.  I  have  taken  the  responsibility 
of  doing  it,  realizing  that  there  was  no  other  way  in 
which  you  could  be  made  acquainted  with  the  true  situ 
ation.  There  is  much  more  that  I  could  say  about  all 
this,  but  it  seems  a  waste  of  time  to  write  it.  Can  we 
not  meet  sometime,  and  get  at  each  other's  point  of 
view?  I  am  going  to  be  in  town  the  day  after  to-mor 
row,  and  unless  I  hear  from  you  to  the  contrary,  I 
will  drop  in  to  see  you  some  time  in  the  morning." 

§  14.  THYRSIS  read  this  letter  over  two  or  three 
times ;  and  then,  resisting  the  impulse  to  elaborate  his 
exposition  of  the  economic  bases  of  the  marriage  in 
stitution,  he  took  it  in  to  town  and  mailed  it.  He 
waited  eagerly  for  a  reply  the  next  day ;  but  no  reply 
came*. 

The  morning  after  that,  he  walked  down  to  town  as 
he  had  agreed  to,  and  called  at  Mr.  Harding's  home. 
The  door  was  opened  by  his  housekeeper,  Delia  Gor 
don's  aunt.  "Is  Mr.  Harding  in?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"He's  gone  up  to  the  city,"  was  the  reply. 

"To  the  city,"  said  Thyrsis.     "When  did  he -go?" 

"He  left  this  morning." 

"And  when  will  he  be  back?" 

"I  don't  know.  He  left  rather  suddenly,  and  he 
didn't  say." 

"I  see,"  said  Thyrsis.     "Tell  him  I  called,  please." 

And  so  he  went  home  and  mailed  another  note  to 
Mr.  Harding,  asking  him  to  make  an  appointment  for 
a  meeting;  after  which  he  waited  for  three  or  four 
days — but  still  there  came  no  reply. 


654  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Have  you  heard  anything  more  from  Mr.  Hard 
ing?"  he  asked  of  Corydon,  finally. 

"No,  dear,"  she  answered.  "I  don't  expect  to  hear." 
But  he  saw  that  she  was  nervous  and  distrait;  and  he 
knew  by  her  unwonted  interest  in  the  mail  that  she 
was  all  the  time  hoping  to  get  some  word  from  him. 

When  it  came  to  handling  any  affair  with  Corydon, 
Thyrsis  was  a  poor  diplomatist.  He  would  tell  himself 
that  this  or  that  should  be  kept  from  her  for  the 
present;  but  the  secrecy  always  irked  him — his  impulse 
was  to  talk  things  out  with  her,  to  go  hand  in  hand 
with  her  to  face  the  facts  of  their  life.  So  now,  in 
this  case;  one  afternoon  he  settled  her  comfortably  in 
a  hammock,  and  sat  beside  her  and  took  her  hand. 

"Corydon,"  he  said,  "I've  something  I  want  to  tell 
you.  I've  been  having  a  correspondence  with  Mr. 
Harding." 

She  started,  and  stared  at  him  wildly.  "What  do 
you  mean?"  she  gasped. 

"I  wrote  him  two  letters,"  said  he. 

"What  about?" 

"I  wanted  to  explain  about  us,"  he  said;  and  then 
he  told  her  what  he  had  put  in  the  first  letter,  and  read 
Mr.  Harding's  reply,  which  he  had  in  his  pocket. 

"What  do  you  make  of  it?"  he  asked. 

"Tell  me  what  your  answer  was !"  cried  Corydon, 
quickly;  and  so  he  began  to  outline  his  second  letter. 

But  she  did  not  let  him  get  very  far.  "You  wrote 
him  that  way  about  marriage!"  she  exclaimed. 

"Yes,  dear,"  said  he. 

"But,  Thyrsis  !     He'll  be  perfectly  horrified !" 

"You  think  so?" 

"Why,  Thyrsis!  Don't  you  understand?  He's  a 
clergyman !" 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  655 

"I  know;  but  it's  the  truth " 

"You  don't  know  anything  about  people  at  all!" 
she  cried.  "Can't  you  realize?  He  doesn't  reason  about 
things  like  you ;  you  can't  appeal  to  him  in  that  way !" 

"Well,  what  was  I  to  do " 

"We'll  never  see  him  again!"  exclaimed  Corydon,  in 
despair. 

"That  won't  be  any  worse  than  it  was  before,  will 
It?" 

"Tell  me,"  she  rushed  on,  in  her  agitation.  "Did 
you  tell  him  that  I  had  no  idea  what  you  were  doing?" 

"Of  course  I  told  him  that." 

"But  did  you  make  it  perfectly  clear  to  him?" 

"I  tried  to,  dear." 

"Tell  me  what  you  said!  Tell  me  the  rest  of  the 
letter." 

And  so  he  recited  it,  as  well  as  he  could,  while  she 
listened,  breathless  with  dismay.  "How  could  you!" 
she  cried. 

Then  she  read  over  Mr.  Harding's  letter  once  more. 
"You  see,"  she  said ;  "he  was  simply  dazed.  He  didn't 
know  what  to  say,  he  didn't  know  what  to  think." 

"He'll  get  over  it  in  time.  He  had  to  know,  some 
how." 

"But  why  did  he  have  to  know?  Why  couldn't 
things  have  stayed  as  they  were?" 

"But  my  dear,  you  are  in  love  with  the  man,  aren't 
you?" 

"But  I  don't  want  to  marry  him,  Thyrsis!  I  don't 
— I  don't  love  him  enough." 

"You  might  have  come  to  it  in  the  course  of  time," 
he  replied. 

"Don't  you  see  that  he'd  have  to  give  up  being  a 
clergyman?"  she  exclaimed. 


656  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"That's  been  done  before,"  he  said. 

«But — see  it  from  his  point  of  view !  Think  of  the 
scandal !" 

"I  don't  think  much  about  scandals,"  Thyrsis  an 
swered.  "That  part  could  be  arranged." 

"But  do  the  laws  give  people  divorces  in  that  way?" 

"Our  divorce  laws  are  relics  of  feudalism,"  he  an 
swered.  "One  does  not  take  them  seriously." 

"But  how  can  you  get  around  them,  Thyrsis  ?" 

"You  simply  have  to  admit  whatever  offense  they 
require." 

"But  Thyrsis !  Think  how  that  would  seem  to  Mr. 
Harding!" 

"My  dear,"  he  answered,  "if  I  knew  that  a  divorce 
was  necessary  to  your  happiness,  I  would  take  upon 
myself  whatever  disgrace  was  necessary." 

Corydon  sat  gazing  at  him.  "Is  it  so  easy  to  give 
me  up?"  she  asked. 

"It  wasn't  easy  at  all,  my  dear,"  he  answered.  "It 
was  a  fight  that  I  fought  out." 

"But  you  decided  that  you  could  do  it!"  she  ex 
claimed;  and  that,  he  found,  was  the  aspect  of  the 
matter  that  stayed  with  her  in  the  end.  It  seemed  a 
poor  sort  of  compliment  he  had  paid  her;  and  how 
could  he  make  real  to  her  the  pangs  the  decision  had 
cost  him?  He  expected  her  to  take  that  for  granted 
—in  all  these  years,  had  he  not  been  able  to  convince 
her  of  his  love? 

It  was  the  old  story  between  them,  he  reflected;  he 
was  always  being  called  upon  to  express  his  feelings, 
and  always  reluctant  to  attempt  it.  Just  now  she 
wanted  him  to  enter  upon  an  eloquent  exposition  of  how 
he  had  suffered  and  hesitated  before  he  mailed  the  let 
ter;  and  she  would  hang  upon  his  words,  and  drink 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  657 

them  in  greedily — and  of  course,  the  more  conducing 
he  made  them,  the  more  she  would  love  him. 

She  could  never  leave  him,  she  insisted — the  '.de&  of 
giving  him  up  was  madness.  She  had  not  meant  any 
such  thing  by  falling  in  love  with  Mr.  Harding,,  Why 
must  he  be  so  elemental,  so  brutally  direct?  He  was 
like  some  clumsy  animal,  blundering  about  in  the  gar 
den  where  she  kept  her  sentimental  plants.  He  fright 
ened  her,  as  he  had  frightened  Mr.  Harding.  She 
stood  appalled  at  this  thing  which  he  had  done;  the 
truth  being  that  his  action  had  sprung  from  a  certain 
deep  conviction  in  him,  which  he  never  found  courage 
to  utter  to  her. 

§  15.  THYESIS  pledged  his  word  that  he  would  write 
no  more  to  Mr.  Harding;  and  so  they  settled  down  to 
wait  for  a  reply.  But  a  couple  more  days  passed,  and 
still  there  came  nothing. 

Corydon  was  restless  and  impatient.  "What  com  he 
be  doing?"  she  exclaimed.  Finally  it  chanced  that 
Thyrsis  had  to  go  to  Bellevue  upon  some  errand;  and 
so  the  two  drove  into  town  together,  and  came  upon 
the  solution  of  the  mystery. 

On  the  street  they  met  Mr.  Jennings,  the  high-school 
principal. 

"Good-morning,"  said  he.  "A  fine  day."  And  then, 
"Have  you  heard  the  news  about  Harding?'* 

"What  news?"  asked  Thyrsis. 

"He's  gone  away." 

"Gone  away!" 

"He's  resigned  his  pastorate." 

Thyrsis  stared  at  the  man,  dazed;  he  felt  Corydon 
beside  him  give  a  start.  "Resigned  his  pastorate !"  she 
echoed. 


658  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Yes,"  said  the  other,  "just  so." 

"But  why?" 

"We  none  of  us  know.     We're  at  our  wits'  end." 

"But — how  did  you  hear  it?" 

"I'm  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  church,  and  his 
letter  was  read  last  night." 

Thyrsis  could  not  find  a  word  to  utter.  He  sat 
staring  at  the  man  in  bewilderment. 

"What  did  he  say?"  cried  Cory  don,  at  last. 

"He  said  that  for  some  time  he  had  been  dissatisfied 
with  his  work,  and  felt  the  need  of  more  study  and  re 
flection.  It  quite  took  our  breath  away,  for  nobody'd 
had  the  least  idea  that  anything  was  wrong." 

"But  what's  he  going  to  do?" 

"Apparently  he's  going  abroad,"  was  the  answer — 
"at  least  he  ordered  his  mail  to  be  forwarded  to  an  ad 
dress  in  Switzerland.  And  that's  all  we  know." 

Then,  after  a  few  remarks  about  the  spiritual  fer 
ment  in  the  churches,  the  worthy  high-school  principal 
went  on  his  way,  and  left  Corydon  and  Thyrsis  in  the 
middle  of  the  street.  For  a  minute  or  two  they  sat 
staring  before  them  as  if  in  a  trance ;  and  then  sud 
denly  from  Thyrsis'  lips  there  burst  a  peal  of  wild 
laughter.  "By  the  Lord  God,  he  ran  away  from  it!" 
he  cried ;  and  he  seized  Corydon  by  the  arm  and  cried 
again,  "He  ran  away  from  it!" 

"Thyrsis !"  exclaimed  the  other.  "Don't  laugh  about 
it!" 

"Don't  laugh !'  he  gasped ;  and  again  the  convulsion 
of  hilarity  swept  over  him. 

But  Corydon  turned  upon  him  swiftly.  "No!"  she 
cried.  "Stop!  It's  no  joke!" 

She  was  staring  at  him,  her  eyes  wide  with  consterna- 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  659 

tion  and  dismay.  "Think!"  she  exclaimed.  "He's 
given  up  his  career !" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "so  it  seems." 

"It's  awful!"  she  cried.     "Oh,  how  could  he!" 

He  saw  the  way  the  news  affected  her,  and  he  made 
an  effort  to  control  himself.  "The  man  simply  couldn't 
face  it,"  he  said.  "He  didn't  dare  to  trust  himself. 
He  ran." 

"But  Thyrsis!"  she  exclaimed.  "I  can't  believe  it! 
He's  given  up  his  whole  life-work!" 

"He's  fled  like  Joseph,"  said  Thyrsis — "leaving  his 
cloak  in  the  hands  of  the  temptress !" 

And  then,  the  strain  proving  too  much  for  him,  he 
began  to  laugh  again.  Becoming  aware  of  the  stares 
of  some  people  on  the  street,  he  started  up  the  horse, 
and  drove  on  into  the  country,  where  he  could  be  alone, 
and  could  give  unrestrained  expression  to  the  emotions 
that  possessed  him. 

He  imagined  the  dismay  and  perplexity  of  the  un 
happy  clergyman,  with  his  belief  in  the  sacred  institu 
tion  of  marriage — and  with  the  vision  of  Corydon  pur 
suing  him  all  day,  and  haunting  his  dreams  at  night. 
He  imagined  him  trying  to  face  the  interview  with  the 
husband — with  the  terrible,  conventionless  husband, 
whose  arguments  could  not  be  answered.  "He  simply 
couldn't  face  me!  He  went  the  very  morning  I  was 
coming !" 

So  he  would  laugh  again;  he  would  laugh  until  he 
was  so  weak  that  he  had  to  lie  back  in  his  seat.  "I  can't 
believe  that  it's  true !"  he  exclaimed.  "My  dear,  I  think 
it's  the  funniest  thing  that  ever  happened  since  the 
world  began !" 

"But  Thyrsis!"  she  protested.  "Think  what  we've 
done  to  him !  The  man's  life  is  wrecked !" 


660  LOVE'S    PILGRIMAGE 

"Nonsense !"  said  he.  "It's  the  best  thing  that  could 
have  happened  to  him.  He  might  have  gone  on  preach 
ing  sermons  all  his  life — but  now  he's  got  some  ideas 
to  work  out.  He'll  have  time  to  read  books,  and  to 
think." 

"But  he  must  be  suffering  so!"  exclaimed  Corydon, 
who  could  not  forget  her  love,  even  in  the  presence  of 
his  ribaldry. 

"He  needs  to  suffer,"  Thyrsis  replied.  "He  may 
meet  some  of  the  radicals  over  there,  and  come  back  with 
a  new  point  of  view." 

But  Corydon  shook  her  head.  "You  don't  know 
him,"  she  said.  "He  couldn't  possibly  change.  I  don't 
think  I'll  ever  hear  from  him  again." 

Thyrsis  looked  at  her  and  saw  that  there  were  tears 
in  her  eyes.  He  put  his  hand  upon  hers.  "We'll  have 
to  worry  through  for  a  while  longer,  dear,"  he  said. 
"Never  mind — we'll  manage  to  make  out  somehow !" 

§  16.  THEY  drove  home;  and  all  through  supper 
they  talked  about  this  breathless  event.  Afterwards 
they  sat  in  the  twilight,  upon  the  porch,  and  threshed 
it  out  in  its  every  aspect.  ' 

"Corydon,"  said  he,  "I  don't  believe  you  really  loved 
him  as  much  as  you  thought.  Did  you?" 

She  stared  before  her  without  answering. 

"Would  you  have  loved  him  for  long?"  he  persisted. 

She  pondered  over  this.  "I  don't  think  one  could 
love  a  man  always,"  she  answered,  "unless  he  had  a 
mind." 

At  which  he  pondered  in  turn.  "Then  it  was  too  bad 
to  drive  him  away!" 

"That's  just  it,"  said  she.  "That's  what  I  couldn't 
make  clear  to  you." 


THE  BREAK  FOR  FREEDOM  661 

"But  still,  we  had  to  find  out." 
"You  may  have,"  she  said.     "I  didn't." 
Thyrsis  looked,  and  saw  that  she  was  smiling  through 
her  tears.     He  took  her  hand  in  his.     "We'll  see  each 
other  through,  dear,"  he  said.     "We'll  have  to  wait 
until  the  world  grows  up." 

He  felt  an  answering  pressure  of  her  hand.  "Thyr 
sis,"  she  said,  "you  must  promise  me  that  you  will 
never  do  anything  dreadful  like  that  again.  You  must 
understand  me;  I  might  think  that  I  was  in  love,  but 
it  would  never  be  real — truly  it  wouldn't.  No  man 
could  ever  mean  to  me  what  you  mean — I  know  that! 
And  I  couldn't  give  you  up — you  must  never  let  your 
self  think  of  such  a  thing!  I  couldn't  give  you  up!" 
So  there  came  to  Thyrsis  one  of  those  bursts  of 
tenderness  that  she  knew  so  well.  He  put  his  arms 
about  her  and  kissed  her  with  fervor ;  but  even  while 
he  spoke  with  her,  and  gave  her  the  love  she  desired, 
there  was  something  in  him  that  sank  back  and  moaned 
with  despair.  So  the  captive  sinks  and  moans  when  he 
finds  that  his  break  for  freedom  has  led  only  to  the 
tightening  of  his  chains. 


They  stood  for  the  last  time  before  the  cabin,  bidding 
farewell  to  the  little  glen  and  all  its  memories. 

"There  are  lines  in  the  poem  for  everything,"  she 
said.  "Even  for  that!"  And  she  quoted — 

"He  hearkens  not!  light  comer,  he  is  flown!" 
He  laughed.     "I  can  do  better  yet"  he  said — 
"Alack,  for  Cory  don  no  rival  now!" 

There  was  a  pause.  "That  was  five  years,"  she 
mused.  "And  there  were  five  more!" 

"It  will  mean  another  book,"  he  said.  "To  tell  about 
the  new  work;  and  how  Thyrsis  became  a  social  lion; 
and  how,  like  Icarus,  he  flew  too  high  and  melted  his 
wings.  And  then,  'The  Exploiters,9  the  book  of  his 
•vengeance!  And  then  Cory  don " 

"Yes,  do  not  forget  Corydon,"  she  said. 

"How  he  watched  her  dying  before  his  eyes,  and 
how  he  prayed  for  months  for  courage  to  kill  her,  and 
could  not,  but  ran  away.  And  then " 

"It  will  make  a  long  story." 

"Yes — a  long  story.  'Love's  Deliverance,9  let  us 
call  it." 

"They  will  smile  at  that.  It  sounds  like  Reno, 
Nevada." 

"  'Love's  Deliverance,'  even  so,"  he  said.     "To  tett 


LOVE'S  PILGRIMAGE  663 

how  Thyrsis  went  out  into  the  wilderness  and  found 
himself;  and  of  the  new  love  that  came  to  Corydon." 

"It  will  be  a  Bible  for  lovers,"  said  she. 

"Yes,"  he  replied,  and  smiled — "with  a  book  t  of 
Chronicles,  and  a  book  of  Proverbs,  and  a  book  of 
Psalms,  and  a  book  of  Revelations " 

"And  several  books  of  Epistles,"  she  interposed. 

"The  tablets  in  the  temple  are  cracked,"  he  said, 
"and  the  fortresses  of  privilege  are  crumbling.  When 
the  Revolution  is  here — when  there  are  no  longer 
priests  nor  judges  nor  class-taboos — then  out  of  the 
hunger  of  our  own  hearts  we  shall  have  to  shape  our 
sex-ideals,  and  organize  our  new  aristocracies" 

"They  will  call  it  a  book  of  'free  love',"  said  she. 

To  which  he  answered,  gravely:  "Let  us  redeem  our 
great  words  from  base  uses.  Let  that  no  longer  call 
itself  Love,  which  knows  that  it  is  not  free!" 


14  DAY  USE 

RETUKN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall.          * 


LIB 


FEi 


REC'D 

JAN    4  '66  -3PM 

y 

LOAN  DEPT. 

ts;;~  ^«j  ~t  cDDiKiri  n,,=r* 

subject  to  recall   after- 

71  0    ^ 

i;      REC'D  LD  JUN 

171  -8  AM  12 

JAN  22  1978 

RFPFivrn  DV 

MAY  2  0  1981 

1AM    0    A    1070 

\ 

vJMIN   &   -±    10/0 

SANTA  CRUZ 

1 

INTERLIBRARY  LOAN 

B 

b 

LD  2lA-60m-3,'65 
(F2336slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


I 


LD 

1961 


SSB 


LD  21-95m-ll,'50(2877sl6)476 


U.C.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CD535025D3 


*'   UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


